Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

Alfred Flechtheim and Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was a German artist mainly of portraits and history paintings and is attributed as being the ‘discoverer of Jewish self-confidence in art’. As such, he is often regarded as the first Jewish artist of the modern era who also enjoyed an academic eduction. He continued his studies in Munich, Paris and in Classical Rome, in particular, and belonged to the circle of artists around the Nazarenes. Turning away from French Neoclassical art he was full of enthusiasm for the Pre-Raphaelite revival of Mannerist ideals. After years spent travelling, he settled in Frankfurt in 1828. He painted the portraits of members of the Rothschild and other aspiring Jewish families. In doing so, he captured the emancipation of the Jewish bourgeoisie in the city of Frankfurt. He also created history paintings with contemporary and biblical subjects, illustrated books, painted the portraits of the emperors Otto IV and Joseph II in the ‘Römersaal’ in Frankfurt City Hall, as well as portraits of Heinrich Heine and Moses Mendelssohn. Oppenheim also made caricatures about the Revolutions of 1848 in the German States. He travelled throughout Europe as the art agent for the Rothschild family. In 1900, almost 20 years after his death, an exhibition was held in the Frankfurter Kunstverein to mark Oppenheim’s 100^th birthday.

When Alfred Flechtheim opened a branch gallery in Frankfurt am Main with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in August 1921 he showed the oil painting 'Lehrer und Schüler' as well as other works by the Frankfurt artist Moritz Daniel Oppenheim at the first exhibition. He sold one painting to the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne as a commission from a local banker.