Painter, muralist and illustrator John Henry Amshewitz was born into a Jewish family in Ramsgate, England on 19 December 1882 (his father, Asher Amschejewitz, an Orthodox rabbi and scholar, born in Vilna, having settled in the town in 1867). In 1902 Amshewitz won an art scholarship to study at the Royal Academy schools (1902–07), under the direction of John Singer Sargent, Sir George Clausen and Solomon J. Solomon; his fellow students included Samuel R. Samuel (later Samuel Fyzee-Rahamin). While still a student, Amshewitz exhibited at the Royal Academy (from 1905), showing a portrait of his father in 1906. In 1905 he also won a £40 prize for mural decoration, then won both first and second place in an open competition to paint four murals for the Centenary Memorial at the Liverpool City Hall in 1907, and a mural for the Royal Exchange in London in 1910. A portrait sketch commemorates his friendship with aspiring poet-painter Isaac Rosenberg (1909). Amshewitz also illustrated works for the Jewish writer Israel Zangwill, including Ghetto Comedies (1907), and a Haggadah (1930). He was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1914.
In 1916, after being rejected for military service (owing to an injury incurred during the creation of the Liverpool murals), he accepted a theatrical role in a Jewish comedy touring South Africa for six months, afterwards settling in Johannesburg for six years and painting local portraits. He held his first exhibition in South Africa in 1916 and was elected a member of the South African Society of Artists in 1917. In 1918, he married Sarah Briana Judes (who published The Paintings of JH Amshewitz in London in 1951); he founded the Johannesburg Sketch Club the same year and, as President, mentoring other Johannesburg artists, leading to the founding of the School of Art, and also became chief cartoonist for the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Times. His commissions included a portrait of Mrs Louis Botha the wife of the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa (1920) and a War Memorial in Boksburg (1921).
Amshewitz returned to England in 1922, exhibiting at the Royal Society of British Artists (1923), in the International Exhibition at the Royal Academy (1925), where he exhibited his etching “The Wedding” (copies are now in the South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the Ben Uri Collection); he held a solo exhibition at the Fine Art Society (1927). He also participated in group shows including the British Artists Exhibition in Italy (1929) and the Paris Salon. After some of his works were acquired by the Royal Family, Queen Mary visited his home in 1932. He continued to publish etchings for journals including the Sketch, the Sphere, the Graphic, Punch and the Illustrated London News, where in 1933 his sketch of Albert Einstein was printed on the front page. Further mural commissions included three large panels for South Africa House in London (1933) and another for Athlone Castle (1935). In 1936 Amshewitz returned to his Johannesburg studio. He was commissioned to create a mural for Pretoria City Hall in 1937, before moving to Cape Town in 1939 for health reasons.
John Henry Amshewitz died in his studio in Cape Town, South Africa on 6 December 1942. A memorial exhibition was held at the City Hall, Johannesburg in 1943. His work is represented in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A, as well as the South African National Art Gallery in Cape Town, the Africana Museum in Johannesburg, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
