The Human Touch

There are many reasons for writing about Raphael Soyer here. There are reasons for writing about him in a lot of other places. There are not many American painters around the age of thirty whose works have been purchased both by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum. But, more than that, there is no other American artist around the age of thirty who has sold both to the Whitney and Metropolitan Museums who used to teach Hebrew for a living—for a whole year, too. And, certainly, there is no other American artist of equal standing whose father is so notable, as Avrom Schoar as a teacher of Hebrew and as a writer of sketches, stories and novels in the Yiddish and Hebrew tongues. In Greenwich Village today, his son tells me, he meets young men of his age who still know the Hebrew the elder Schoar taught them.

It is possible to say of the Soyer family that all the brothers are painters. Moses Soyer, the eldest, was the first to bring reputation to the family. And after Raphael there is Isaac, who is about twenty-six or seven and of whom nothing yet has been heard, or, rather, since he is a painter, seen. It is the father, Raphael tells me, who inspired his boys to draw and paint; he himself has made pictures, as an amateur.

Raphael Soyer began painting in earnest and on a full-time basis six or seven years ago. Up to that time he had been a Sunday painter. As a youth he had made his living in factories, and later on, as a Hebrew teacher. Then, six or seven years ago, Alexander Brook took him in hand. He had him elected to the Whitney Club, forerunner of the Museum, and succeeded in promoting the first sale of Raphael’s paintings. Knowing how much Raphael Soyer owes to Brook, who, like the Soyers, also comes from Russia, it is pleasant to record that the Metropolitan, at the same time that it purchased Soyer’s Girl in a White Blouse acquired also its first. Alexander Brook, his portrait of his son.

Soyer had his first one-man show at the Daniel Galleries three years ago. A second exhibition followed, of drawings and small paintings, at L’Elan Galleries and his most impressive exhibition was put on last April at the Valentine Galleries. It was from that exhibition that the Metropolitan made its choice. Recalling the powerful impression that that exhibition made upon me at the time, I venture the guess that the. Metropolitan people must have had a difficult time in selecting only one painting. Private collectors fortunately were not absent.

Raphael Soyer is one of those rare painters who has lived through the years of the depression without complaint and, if we are to believe him, without cause for complaint. He has always sold his pictures; galleries always have been interested in his work and have not allowed his canvasses to molder in his studio. He has also had the good fortune to be invited to conduct a class at the Art Students’ League, which commission further relaxes the economic pressure, if any.

He knows how to paint and he knows what to paint. At the beginning, he tells me, his chief concern was in subject matter; today it is in manner. This does not mean that his painting is mannered; it is simply impressive, strong, full of character. At the Valentine last April I knew that I was looking at the work of an entity, of an individuality, not at the work of a painter who was under the influence of such and such another painter or such and such a style. The purchase by the Metropolitan did not inform me of the superiority of Soyer; it merely seconded and gave authority to my impression of his superiority.

Raphael Soyer paints only simple subjects, subjects he knows well, people he understands. He does not paint professional models. The person whose character he expresses is the person who sits to him, and the nature of the person sitting to him gets itself conveyed to the canvas. He would not fulfill a portrait commission, because he does not “know” the kind of people who commission portraits. The subject of the Metropolitan painting, who is known simply as Gitel, is a village dilletante, a “blues” singer and amateur poet, but dominant. His present model is humble and awkward and the series of paintings in which she appears takes something from her humbleness and awkwardness. “A painter,” he says, “must convey a certain at-### is supposed to be finished. Raphael Soyer has only begun.

ANONYMOUS LETTER

An Anonymous correspondent who lives in a house overlooking the northern part of Central Park contributes a curious reason for the success of some intermarriages he knows about. I assume it’s a “he”, although I have no certain way of telling; it might be a she. The reason, in brief, is this: that while Jewish husbands are in effect purchased for their brides, there is no such arrangement in intermarriages. In the intermarriages about which our correspondent knows, the majority of the mates are Gentile women and Jewish men. In the one case wherein a Jewish girl married a Gentile, regret was expressed to the correspondent—by the girl.

“There is no doubt about it.” I am informed, “that Jewish men more than ever are turning to Gentile mates. Whether Jewish girls do so is a question as they rarely get an opportunity to listen to marriage proposals from Gentile men. The latter seem to have too great a respect for their own women to want to take Jewish brides.” I must confess that this is news to me—at least the first part of it.

Now in the prosperous homes who, upon marriage to their own, fail to give their husbands deference, our correspondent finds “that the girls either come from well-to-do families which can offer security and help to the husband, or they have paid big dowries for the Jewish male. In other words, the husbands were purchased and as such could hardly get the esteem and the deference they expect. Look at the marriages where men have not been### ambitious to get along in the Gentile world, marry Gentile women. Carried away with his, or her, theme, my correspondent doesn’t conclude his, or her, letter short of race extinction, as observe:

“To me there is no greater tragedy than to see the great number of fine, accomplished Jewish girls, who have splendid potentialities for wifehood and motherhood, being passed up by Jewish men for Gentile chorus girls, nurses, clerks and society debutantes who not being able to get a good Gentile provider, grab a Jewish one, knowing that he will not only provide, but remain faithful. This will bring about the extinction of our race quicker than any Hitler persecution.”

I had no idea it was that bad.