Ben Uri Collection

Forest of Rambouillet

Artist information

Name Henri Epstein (1892-1944)

Born Lodz, Poland

Died Auschwitz, Poland

Find more work in the collection by this artist

Henri Epstein was born into a Jewish family in Lódz, Poland in 1891. His father died when he was three and he was raised by his mother, who encouraged his interest in painting. He studied at Jakub Kacenbogen's drawing school at Lódz, then at the School of Fine Arts in Munich. Epstein visited Paris in 1912 before serving in the Polish army, then returned to Paris, where he settled at La Ruche (the beehive) artists' colony from 1913-38, studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Although Epstein’s early artwork was influenced by fauvism, he then adopted an expressionist technique. He exhibited both at the Salon d'automne and the Salon des Tuileries. He illustrated Gustave Coquiot’s Vagabondages (1921) and Pierre Bonardi's Les Rois du Maquis (1926), as well as contributing to the first textless Jewish art journal produced in Paris in 1912, Machmadim (Precious Ones). Epstein bought a farm near Epernon, which became his refuge during the Occupation, until on 23 February 1944 he was arrested by Gestapo agents. Despite appeals by his wife (the daughter of painter Georges Dorignac) and his friends, Epstein was sent to Drancy detention camp on 21 February 1944. He was deported on 7 March in convoy number 69 and killed in Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland in June. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Paris in 1946.

Object Details

Date c. 1931

Object type painting

Medium oil on canvas

Materials and techniques oil (medium) canvas (support)

Unframed 53 x 71.5 cm

Framed 70.5 x 89.5 cm

Signed (lower left): 'H. Epstein'

Acquisition purchased

Accession number 1987-85

Display status not on display

The title of the painting, Forest of Rambouillet, refers to a forest located west of Paris, near to where the artist used to live. Epstein uses a predominantly green palette, free brushstrokes and generously applied paint to create a textured and vivid surface typical of his later expressive style.

Selected exhibition history

1954
Exhibition of Jewish Art
Hove Museum of Art


1970
Paintings from the Ben Uri Art Gallery
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum


1980
Exhibition of Selected Works from the Permanent Collection of the Ben Uri Art Gallery
Ben Uri Gallery


2012
Chaim Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris and School of London works from the Ben Uri Collection
Ben Uri Gallery


2013
Chagall, Soutine and the School of Paris: touring exhibition
Manchester Jewish Museum


Literature

Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, eds., Ben Uri: 100 Years in London - Art, Identity, Migration (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), p. 74 (illus.); Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013), p.12 (illus.); Sarah MacDougall ed., Soutine and his Contemporaries - from Russia to Paris (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2012) p. 22; 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. 38

Forest of Rambouillet by Henri Epstein

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