Rediscovering Wolmark: A Pioneer of British Modernism
Forthcoming exhibition
The Grey Wig, 1925
watercolour, pen and ink on paper
20.5 x 13 cm
signed and dated (lower left): Wolmark 1925
1987-438v
@Alfred Wolmark estate
Photo: Bridgeman images
This watercolour is the eighth in a series of fourteen book illustrations Wolmark made to accompany the complete works of Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), the foremost Anglo-Jewish writer of his generation....
This watercolour is the eighth in a series of fourteen book illustrations Wolmark made to accompany the complete works of Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), the foremost Anglo-Jewish writer of his generation. Known as ‘the Jewish Dickens’, Zangwill’s best-known novel, Children of the Ghetto (1892), vividly described the Whitechapel slums; he also wrote the play The Melting Pot (1908) depicting American Jewish immigrant life and its rich mix of cultures. Both Wolmark and Zangwill were closely associated with Ben Uri from the early 1920s, Zangwill as President in 1922-23, and Wolmark as Vice President for almost a quarter of a century, from 1923-56.