Ben Uri Pre-Eminent Collection

Self-Portrait in Steel Helmet

Artist information

Name Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

Born Bristol, England

Died Fampoux, France

Find more work in the collection by this artist

Isaac Rosenberg was born into a Jewish immigrant family in Bristol, England on 25 November 1890 and raised in great poverty in Whitechapel. Despite an early talent for drawing and writing, by the age of fourteen he was unhappily apprenticed to a firm of Fleet Street engravers. He took evening art classes at Birkbeck College, London, where he won many prizes, before following Mark Gertler and David Bomberg to the Slade School of Fine Art (1911–14). Often unable to afford models, his oeuvre includes many self-portraits as well as landscapes and works on literary themes. In 1914 his work was included in the so-called 'Jewish Section' co-curated by Bomberg and Jacob Epstein as part of 'Twentieth-Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements' at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Afterwards Rosenberg visited his sister in South Africa where he painted, wrote and lectured about art, before returning to England in 1915. After enlisting in the army in October 1915, he was sent to the Front in 1916, from where he sent home his poignant Self-portrait in Steel Helmet (1916). He was killed, aged 27, while on patrol in Fampoux, France on 1 April 1918. Despite publishing only two short collections of poetry during his lifetime, Rosenberg is now regarded as one of the finest War Poets of his generation. The exhibition, 'Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle' (Ben Uri, 2008), was the first to examine his art in the context of his Whitechapel peers. Rosenberg's work is in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Imperial War Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate, and UCL.

Object Details

Date 1916

Object type painting

Medium black chalk, gouache and wash on paper

Materials and techniques chalk (medium) drawing (technique) paper (support)

Unframed 24 x 19.6 cm

Framed 47 x 40.7 cm

Acquisition Acquired in 2009 with the assistance of Art Fund, the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and anonymous donors

Accession number 2009-39

Display status not on display

Rosenberg was often unable to afford models and his oeuvre includes many self-portraits. The earliest are slight and delicate in the melancholic Romantic tradition of Benjamin Robert Haydon’s portrait sketches of the young Keats. Between 1912 and 1915, however, under the influence of the Slade, Rosenberg began to shed this persona in a series of leaner, bolder self-portraits which display a new bravura confidence and mark his transition to modernism. Unsentimental, yet poignant, this is Rosenberg’s final self-portrait and completes the series; it is also his final finished work as a painter. Drawn in gouache and chalk on crumpled, poor quality brown paper, possibly salvaged from a parcel sent from home, after Rosenberg had been sent to the Front in Northern France, its fragile state documents this important part of its history. The portrait appears to relate closely to a sketch made in a letter, entitled Self-portrait Sketch in Tin Helmet (c.1916, Imperial War Museum) of which Rosenberg joked to his family that it was ‘The New Fashion boiler hat – the trench hat’. These hats or steel helmets were issued in June 1916 while the troops were in billets prior to their first experience of trench warfare and most probably the gouache portrait was created at this time.

Rosenberg was killed while on patrol on 1st April 1918 at the age of 27. Despite publishing only two short collections of poetry during his lifetime, Rosenberg is now regarded as one of the finest War Poets of his generation.

Selected exhibition history

1975
Isaac Rosenberg: A Poet & Painter of the First World War
The National Book League


2008
Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg & His Circle
Ben Uri Gallery


2010
Apocalypse: unveiling a lost masterpiece by Marc Chagall and 50 selected masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection
Osborne Samuel


2013
Selected Highlights from over 200 works acquired during 2003-2013
Ben Uri Art Gallery


2014
Screaming Steel: Art, Poetry and Trauma 1914-18
Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle


2014
For King and Country
The Jewish Museum, London


2015
Out of Chaos – Ben Uri: 100 Years in London
Somerset House


2016
100 for 100: Ben Uri Past, Present & Future
Christie's South Kensington


2018
Acquisitions and Long-Term Loan Highlights Since 2001
Ben Uri Gallery


2019
Mark Gertler: Paintings from the Luke Gertler Bequest & Selected Important UK Collections
Ben Uri Gallery


2023
Art, Identity, Migration - Ben Uri at the London Art Fair
Business Design Centre


Literature

Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, eds., 'Out of Chaos: Ben Uri; 100 Years in London' (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), pp. 48-49; Selected Highlights from over 200 works acquired during 2003-2013 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2013) (illus. included); Apocalypse: Unveiling a lost masterpiece by Marc Chagall (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2010); Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, 'Isaac Rosenberg the Painter: Part II - Shaken and Shivered' in 'Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2008), p. 59.

Self-Portrait in Steel Helmet by Isaac Rosenberg

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Self-Portrait in Steel Helmet by Isaac Rosenberg

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