Ben Uri Collection

Portrait of Alfred Wolmark

Artist information

Name Cyril Joshua Ross (1891-1973)

Other name Cyril Joshua Miselevich

Born London, England

Died London, England

Find more work in the collection by this artist

Cyril Joshua Ross (né Miselevich) was born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family in Stepney, London, England on 21 December 1891. A successful businessman and philanthropist, he was the owner of the West End furriery store Swears & Wells and, as Ben Uri's longstanding Treasurer, provided secure storage in the vaults for the Ben Uri Collection during the Second World War. In 1945 the Hungarian émigré painter Kalman Kemeny won via a competition a commission to execute portraits of the Ben Uri's two most prominent committee members - Cyril Ross and Mrs Ethel Solomon, both of whom, as an introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition Ben Uri Highlights: Key Works and Figures 1915-1990 records, ‘provided leadership during the difficult war years and the 1950s’. He also helped the Ben Uri secure new premises in Portman Street (1944–59). Ross was a prominent figure in Jewish circles. He served as treasurer of both the Zangwill Fellowship and the Jewish National Fund and helped in many causes, including offering support to the impecunious German-Jewish artist Alfred Lomnitz (known as 'Lom'). He served as President of the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor for more than 30 years, keeping it running throughout the Second World War. In 1947 he was awarded the OBE for his services.

Ross also achieved moderate success as a self-taught amateur artist, only beginning to paint, in a traditional manner, at the age of 40, but then participating in exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1945), Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris (1951), the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, London (1952), the Royal Institute Galleries (1954), and at Ben Uri in 1968 and 1972 - the latter celebrating his 80th birthday. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the National Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers/Printmakers.

Cyril Ross died in London, England on 7 July 1973. Since his death, a document released by the National Archives Kew (KV2/3171) suggests that between 1940 and 1954 Ross, under the alias Rosenberg, served as treasurer of the Committee for the Jewish army in 1942, was associated in 1947 with the Irgun Zvei Leumi, and Head of an intelligence network in Britain in 1950.

Object Details

Date c. 1950s

Object type painting

Medium oil on board

Materials and techniques oil (medium) board (support)

Unframed 36.5 x 29 cm

Framed 53 x 45.5 cm

Signed (right): 'Cyril J. Ross'

Acquisition presented by the artist

Accession number 1987-344

Display status not on display

Cyril J Ross's portrait of Polish-Jewish immigrant painter Alfred Wolmark (1877-1961) shows his sitter towards the end of his life. Wolmark was closely associated with Ben Uri and a long-standing Vice-President from 1923-56, while Ross served for a long period as Ben Uri's Treasurer and the two men knew each other well. Wolmark appears in many other portraits in the collection covering most of his career including an early Self-Portrait (1902), a small cameo portrait mischievously included in the background (upper left) of his monumental painting, The Last Days of Rabbi ben Ezra (1905), a dandified portrait by Ernest Borough-Johnson (c. 1909-15), a caricature in Alfred Adrian Wolfe's cartoon of the 1917 art committee, and in another later portrait by Polish-Jewish émigré Max Sokol (c. 1939).

Ross, a successful businessman in the fur trade, was also a self-taught painter, who exhibited at a number of galleries, including Ben Uri, later in life.

Keywords

painting | portrait

Selected exhibition history

1972
80th Birthday Retrospective Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Cyril J. Ross
Ben Uri Art Gallery


1990
Ben Uri Highlights: Key Works and Figures
Ben Uri Art Society


2009
Homeless & Hidden 2: World Class Collection Homeless & Hidden
Ben Uri Gallery


Literature

Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013); Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 90.

Portrait of Alfred Wolmark by Cyril Joshua Ross

Hover mouse cursor over image to zoom (you can also use the mouse wheel).

×
Portrait of Alfred Wolmark by Cyril Joshua Ross

View bigger image


© Cyril Joshua Ross estate

Related works

Self-Portrait
by Alfred Wolmark

The Arts Committee Meeting
by Alfred Adrian Wolfe

Portrait of Alfred Wolmark
by Ernest Borough Johnson

Portrait of Cyril J. Ross
by Kalman Kemeny