Tafereelen uit het Oud-Joodsche Familieleven

A magnificent book illustrated with 20 reproductions of Oppenheim's oil paintings depicting a romanticised view of 18th-century German-Jewish life and customs; with an introduction by Rabbi J. Hoofien.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1801-1882) was a German painter who is often regarded as the first Jewish painter of the modern era. He was inspired by his own Jewish cultural and religious roots at a time when many of his German Jewish contemporaries chose to convert to Christianity. He was born to Orthodox Jewish parents at Hanau and entered the Munich Academy of Arts at the age of seventeen. He later studied in Paris under Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In Rome he studied the life of the Jewish ghetto and made sketches of the various phases of its domestic and religious life in preparation for several large canvases, which he painted on his return to Germany. He received the title of professor in 1832 from the Grand Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar.

Rabbi Jacob Hoofien (1846-1886) trained in Amsterdam and became the Rabbi of Utrecht in 1875, having published a handbook on history of the Jews a few years prior.

Small folio (39 x 29 cm); text in Dutch, plates laid onto thick card with ornamental red border, edges gilt, publisher's pictorial red boards gilt, floral ornaments, botanical endpapers and half-title slightly foxed, spine edges rubbed.