Collection and Identity. Warsaw Art Collectors of Jewish Origin and their "Polish" Collections (1880-1939)

Many collectors in Warsaw between 1880 and 1939 came from now largely forgotten groups – the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia of Jewish descent. According to the records of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts and archival sources in the National Museum in Warsaw, paintings before 1939 were bought primarily by wealthy members of industrialists` or bankers` Jewish families, and representatives of the world of culture, science, especially doctors and lawyers.
In my completed research, I concentrated on four case studies: Edward Rejcher, Franciszek Goldberg-Górski, Gustaw Wertheim and Bronisław Krystall, who represented a varying degree of acculturation with Polishness. An interesting example of this phenomenon was Edward Rejcher, owner of 400 paintings, among others by most important Polish painters of modernism: Matejko, Chełmoński, Gierymski, Fałat, Wyspiański, Malczewski. However, the collection contained also works of painters of Jewish origin like: Maurycy Trębacz, Maurycy and Leopold Gottlieb, Samuel Hirszenberg, Stanisław Heyman, Szymon Buchbinder, Henryk Hochman. Remarkable are works by Maurycy Gottlieb, Jan Matejko`s student, who was regarded as an ideological bridge between Judaism and Christianity, a symbol of reconciliation between Poles and Jews. One of the most remarkable paintings belonging to Reicher`s collection was Samuel Hirszenberg`s "The Black Banner" (now in the Jewish Museum in New York, classified by Richard Cohen as one of the icons of Jewish painting, presenting the nation`s tragic fate). Catalogue written by the collector himself was published in 1918, shortly after Reicher relocated from Aleksandrów Kujawski to Warsaw, and Poland`s regaining its independence. Collectors like Edward Rejcher were suspended between two cultures, being neither wholly Jewish nor Polish, as they were not admitted to Polishness. This complex double identity was reflected in their Polish-Jewish collections.