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75:. Kramer's mother, Cecilia, was also artistic being a trained singer who was well known for touring a regional network of theatres established by her father, at which she performed traditional Slavic and Hebrew folk songs. He had three sisters – Leah, Sarah and Millie – and a brother, Isaak. His sister Sarah married the painter
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the family, like many Jews decided to leave. The father. Max, was in poor health so would not pass the health checks for admission to the US, so instead they came to
England and settled in Leeds, which had an established Jewish population. When they arrived in the UK is not clear: they do not appear
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In 1902, aged only ten, Kramer ran away from his new home in Leeds, taking various jobs in different parts of the north of
England, and even going away to sea for six months, being big for his age. During this sojourn away from his family Kramer attended occasional art classes, but his first formal
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After the collapse of the Leeds Arts Club in 1923 he had numerous schemes to establish a new artistic meeting place in the city, almost all of which came to nothing. The great exception to this was the informal gathering called the
Yorkshire Luncheon Club, which met regularly at
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in 1918, Kramer stated that when he looked at an object he saw both its physical appearance and its spiritual manifestation. His struggle, he claimed, was to escape the physical appearance and only paint the spiritual form. Such ideas came straight from the expressionist and
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His first one-man show was in
Bradford, and he had several exhibitions in London, as well as Glasgow and Leeds. He also gained a reputation as a portrait artist in addition to his more avant-garde work.
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224:. On completion of military service, he returned to Leeds where he became something of a local artistic celebrity. He was naturalised on 16 January 1922.
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where he had a scholarship from 1907 until 1913. During this time he was also to become involved in the radical modernist organisation the
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in the 1901 England and Wales census, but Jacob's sister Millie was born in Leeds in
February 1904. After living for a short time in the
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Ancestry.com, Census of
England and Wales 1911. The census return also shows that a further three siblings had died before then.
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all hold examples of Kramer's work, but the most extensive collections can be found in Leeds at the Leeds City Art
Gallery and
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by his sister and nephew. The collection contains exhibition catalogues (including one signed by such well-known figures as
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spiritualism that dominated the Leeds Arts Club, and show clearly that Kramer was himself an
English Expressionist artist.
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He became an established artist, and also taught at the Leeds School of Art. As a portrait painter, his sitters included
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39:(26 December 1892 – 4 February 1962) was a Russian Empire-born painter who spent all of his working life in
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lands, in 1892, then part of the
Russian Empire, into an artistic middle-class Jewish family, who moved to
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shortly after. His father, Max, was a painter who had studied at the St
Petersburg Fine Art Academy under
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in Leeds, and invited some of the leading cultural figures of the 1930s, 40s and 50s to Leeds to speak.
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Kramer was called up for military service in 1917, serving for two years including in France during the
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was renamed Jacob Kramer College (it changed the name in 1993 to Leeds College of Art and Design).
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He died 4 February 1962, unmarried and with no children, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery at
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Kramer was commissioned to illustrate portions of the Soncino edition of the Bible and Prophets
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beliefs that came to underpin his work. Writing to his close friend and fellow Arts Club member
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With a scholarship from the Jewish Educational Aid Society, Kramer was able to study at the
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and was to be seen frequently at well-known artistic haunts, including the cabaret-club
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from 1913 to 1914. Here be befriended other leading artists of the day, including
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A small selection of personal material belonging to Jacob Kramer was donated to
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they moved to a small house in Beecroft Grove, Leopold Street,
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The Tortoise and the Hare - Jacob Kramer & William Roberts
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William Roberts and Jacob Kramer: The Tortoise and the Hare
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made a bust of him, copies of which can be found in the
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Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom
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in London and at Leeds City Art Gallery. The Tate, the
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Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900–1939
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368:Jewish Historical Society of England (Leeds)
51:Jacob Kramer was born in the small town of
515:Jacob Epstein's bust of Kramer at the Tate
390:(London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2003), pp. 35–6.
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252:. A memorial service was held in
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165:movement led by Roberts and
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505:10 artworks by Jacob Kramer
193:The Cave of the Golden Calf
28:(left), Jacob Kramer &
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433:. London: Viking. p. 303.
16:British artist (1892–1962)
540:Portraits by Jacob Kramer
531:Portraits of Jacob Kramer
93:assassination of the Tsar
526:Leeds University Library
399:Records at ancestry.com.
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59:hubernia of traditional
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26:Roy & Mary Campbell
452:"Secret Library Leeds"
410:"The Thoresby Society"
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590:1962 deaths
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415:17 November
266:His friend
554:Categories
439:0670889660
301:References
250:Gildersome
102:Chapeltown
91:following
69:Ilya Repin
47:Early life
163:Vorticist
126:spiritual
61:Ukrainian
57:Chernihiv
278:and the
259:In 1968
124:and the
98:Leylands
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509:Ben Uri
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87:In the
53:Klintsy
41:England
30:Dolores
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208:Leeds
175:BLAST
511:site
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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