Image
Édouard Moyse (Nancy, 1827 – Paris, 1908), Autoportrait, Nancy, 1853
© Franck Raux, RMN – Grand Palais - mahJ
Self-Portrait
Édouard Moyse (Nancy, 1827 – Paris, 1908)
Nancy, 1853
Oil on canvas, 73 x 59 cm
Gift of Dominique Weill
The painter Édouard Moyse trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, showed regularly at the Salon and was the major French exponent of the painting of the Emancipation practiced by Moritz-Daniel Oppenheim in Germany and Maurycy Gottlieb in Poland. He strove to establish an “Israelite genre” by depicting scenes of Jewish daily life and major episodes in the history of the Jews in France. Although other painters such as Édouard Brandon and Alphonse Lévy also depicted Jewish life, Moyse made it such a speciality that he was nicknamed the “painter of rabbis”. He strove to rehabilitate the image of the Jews and Judaism by developing a new aesthetic. This self-portrait conveys a self-assertion characteristic of the attitude of the second generation of the Emancipation, notably among artists.
