Portrait of a Yeshiva Boy by Leonid Osipovich Pasternak 1862-1945

Description
Signed (lower right)

Technique
Charcoal, gouache and oil pastel on paper

Date Created
1924

Dimensions
25 x 19 cm

Provenance
The Family of the Artist
Sotheby's, "Russian Paintings" Sale, March 1982, lot 338
Purchased at the above by Prof. Victor Deutsch

Condition
Good

Biography
Leonid Pasternak was born in Odessa to an Orthodox Jewish family on 4 April 1862. The family claimed to be distantly descended, in one line, from Isaac Abrabanel, the famous 15th-century Jewish philosopher and treasurer of Portugal, although no independent evidence of this exists.[1] Leonid's father made an income by renting out a guest house. The courtyard of the guest house, with its adjoining coach-house, first awakened Leonid's artistic imagination. He was the youngest of the six children in the family. He started to draw very early, but his family tried to discourage him, as they feared that his drawing would interfere with his studies. His first sponsor was the local street cleaner who began buying Pasternak's art when Leonid was seven years old. During 1879-1881 Leonid Pasternak was a graduate of the Grekov Odessa Art school.