August 25 – October 8, 2023

12 min read

The first Jewish settlements in the United Kingdom

Before the Norman Conquest of 1066, Jewish people lived in England, but not as part of organised communities. The first Jewish settlement of 1070 was comprised of Jewish financiers from Rouen, in the northern region of France, who were invited in by William the Conqueror (William I) to establish themselves in England and Wales in the hopes that they could prop up the administration of his government and consolidate his position as the King of England.

In order to achieve this William I was required to borrow large sums of money. However, he was impeded by Catholic doctrine, which considered lending money for interest, also known as usury, a sin, forbidding Christians from participating in the practice.  As Judaism permits loans with interest between Jews and non-Jews, this obstacle was circumvented, and Jewish people were encouraged and sometimes forced to engage in this practice. Once they arrived in England and Wales, Jewish people became the collective property of the Crown, and, while they were granted a Charter of Liberties which meant that they could rely on the Crown for protection, they were also taxed onerously. The privilege to lend money at interest was exploited by English rulers and, although business dealings prospered between Jews and Christians, as the former grew wealthier, the Jewish community became more and more relied upon as a source of funds, not only for the monarchy, but also for the wider Christian population. Increasing amounts of debt to Jewish creditors, alongside the perceived image of Jews as being on the side of rulers, stoked the growing antisemitic sentiment plaguing Europe at the time. This was also propagated by the beginning of the Crusades in 1096 and fabricated allegations of Jews taking part in a ritual called ‘blood libel’, which involved the abduction and sacrifice of Christian children. The Crown did not protect the Jewish community from persecution and supposedly sometimes conflict was even encouraged by rulers such as William II (William Rufus), the son and successor of William I, who would orchestrate public debates on theological topics between the two parties. All of this came to a head on the coronation of King Richard I in September of 1189, when many Christian and Jewish subjects alike came to Westminster Abbey in London to pay homage to their new ruler. However, Christian holding religious superstitions regarding the presence of Jews at the holy event, flogged them and threw them out of the coronation banquet. After this incident, rumour spread like wildfire throughout England that the king had ordered the murder of Jews, which led to multiple instances of mob-led anti-Jewish violence in London, East Anglia, Lincolnshire and York. Indeed, it was in York that the bloodiest pogrom took place on the 16th and 17th of March, 1190, where 150 Jews were massacred, which completely eradicated the local Jewish community. What set this particular attack apart from the rest is that it was led by the noblemen Richard Malebisse, William Percy, Marmaduke Darell, and Philip de Fauconberg, who took advantage of growing anti-semitic sentiment to erase large amounts of debt accrued from Jewish moneylenders. It was this attack that prompted King Richard I to develop a new system where records of loans were to be kept in archae (chests) in each Jewish settlement, to avoid record destruction.

The Expulsion of Jews of 1290

Subsequent rulers, such as King John (1199-1216) forced the Jewish community to pay ever increasing amounts of money as taxes. In 1210, as a result of his debt accrued from a failed campaign against France, he summoned Jewish leaders from across England to Bristol, where they were imprisoned and tortured, because he believed that they had concealed their assets from him in 1207. They were threatened with continued imprisonment, torture and expulsion if they did not pay him 66,000 marks (approximately the equivalent of £1,000,000 today). They were unable to pay this sum, which resulted in many arrests and jail sentences. In 1215, King John signed the Magna Carta, which contained two clauses pertaining to Jewish moneylending:

‘10. If anyone has taken a loan from Jews, great or small, and dies before the debt is paid, the debt is not to incur interest for as long as the heir is under age, whoever he may hold from. And if the debt comes into our hands, we will take only the principal recorded in the charter.

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A famed red sweater that was worn by Princess Diana sold for $1.14 million at a recent Sotheby’s auction. The colorful jumper, which depicts one black sheep among a crowd of white ones, headlined an online sale called “Fashion Icons.”

The final amount for the sweater blasted past its high estimate of $80,000 and far exceeded the previous record for a garment worn by the former Princess of Wales. That amount was $604,800, more than six times its high estimate, for a deep purple strapless gown designed by Victor Edelstein that was also sold by Sotheby’s in January.

The knitted garment worn by Diana was created by British designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne for the pair’s brand Warm & Wonderful. Diana wore the sweater in June 1981 at a polo match, shortly after she and Prince Charles announced their engagement.

According to Sotheby’s, coverage of Diana wearing the wool item was “the advertisement of a lifetime” for the two-year-old company, and was later credited as giving the small business a “stratospheric launch.” The design was so popular that the American clothing brand Rowing Blazers reissued a cotton version in 2020. It was also featured in the television show The Crown.

Interest in items worn by Diana has skyrocketed, with a rare amethyst cross necklace auctioned by Sotheby’s in London earlier this year. A representative for Kim Kardashian beat four other bidders on the necklace, dubbed the Attallah Cross, worn by Diana at a charity event in October 1987. It sold for £163,800 ($200,000).

A German museum is facing right-wing backlash after creating a designated time for non-white visitors to view an exhibition about colonialism, the Washington Post reported last week. Police remain stationed at the museum.

The Zeche Zollern Museum in Dortmund dedicated four hours each Saturday as a safe space for BIPOC attendees to visit the show “This Is Colonial” with the purpose of being “considerate of people who are more affected by the topic of colonialism than others,” the director of local industrial museums Kirsten Baumann said on Facebook.

Visitors who arrive during that time, however, are not monitored.

The museum received international visibility when a TikTok video of two white men confronting staff about the time slot went viral. In it, the men accuse the museum of discrimination against white people.

The two white men were not asked or forced to leave the premises. But museum employees who were filmed without their consent are reportedly taking legal action for defamation.

A Walk in the Woods (1983), the painting completed on air during the first episode of Bob Ross’s landmark television show The Joy of Painting has come to market, The Art Newspaper reported Thursday.

They say that memories are priceless. However, anyone interested in reliving the first episode of The Joy of Painting via A Walk in the Woods is going to have to shell out a hefty sum: Modern Artifact, the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based gallery selling the canvas, has priced it at $9.85 million. 

The gallery understands that this figure might seem outlandish to some, but that may be the point. The gallery says that while it will entertain offers “they would prefer to share it with a museum or traveling exhibit to allow as many people as possible to view such an exciting work of art.”

Meanwhile, Modern Artifact plans to take the painting on tour itself, according to The Art Newspaper.

In a statement, gallery owner Ryan Nelson wrote about Ross’s singular place in art and cultural history. “Bob Ross has surpassed Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso as the internet’s most searched for artist according to data from Google Analytics,” he said. “It’s an incredibly impressive feat, especially considering that there is virtually no official marketing, and his original paintings are nearly impossible to find.” 

On September 21 at Christie’s, Marchant, the venerable London-based dealer of Asian art, is selling eight pieces of imperial Chinese porcelain they hope will reinvigorate the once-booming Western market for these ceramics. 

The sale sparks interest on multiple fronts. Marchant is a London-based dealer specializing in this exact sort of thing, and has been since 1925, so its collaboration with a house like Christie’s is unusual.

Also, the works headed to sale date to around the time of the ascension of Wanli (1573–1620) as emperor. According to Samuel Marchant, this was an era of very notable porcelain for the late Ming Dynasty, as quality of production fell sharply toward the end of Wanli’s reign.

Marchant knows his stuff. His great-grandfather was Samuel Sidney Marchant founded the firm, and Richard Marchant, Samuel’s grandfather, joined the family business at the age of 17 in 1953.

On the phone with ARTnews, Samuel spoke of the differences between early, middle, and late Ming dynasty porcelain and between Imperial porcelains made “during the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, who are three of the three most prominent and famous emperors of the Qing Dynasty.”

Fernando Botero, a Colombian artist whose paintings peopled with full-figured members of the elite achieved international fame, opening doors for many Latin Americans after him, has died at 91.

Lina Botero, his daughter, told Caracol, a Colombian radio station, that her father died at his home in Monaco on Friday morning. He had been battling pneumonia.

Botero’s paintings of Colombian governmental officials and clergy are now known the world over. He said that when he first started making them, in the 1950s, there wasn’t much other art like it in his home country, where European modernist painting was not widely seen at the time.

His voluptuous figures, with rounded arms, thick waistlines, and sizable thighs, have become instantly distinguishable as Botero’s own. He went on to translate these figures for the third dimension, turning them into sculptures that were sometimes placed in public settings, where they towered over the people who stood before them.

Critics initially debated whether these figures were meant to be parodies, since the politics of Botero’s work was deliberately oblique.

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Whether for art classes or for projects that need pizzazz, a set of good-quality colored pencils is a must for every back-to-school season. It can be overwhelming finding the right one, however, as many colored pencils are geared toward pros. For most students, a solid beginner set—while not necessarily lightfast—will suffice. You’ll quickly see that you don’t have to spend a lot to bring a new world of color to a young artist’s fingertips. Read on for our top picks, which all come in sets of at least two dozen colors with a diverse selection of hues and sharpen easily for frustration-free use.

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How we pick each product:
Our mission is to recommend the most appropriate artists’ tool or supply for your needs. Whether you are looking for top-of-the line equipment or beginners’ basics, we’ll make sure that you get good value for your money by doing the research for you. We scour the Internet for information on how art supplies are used and read customer reviews by real users; we ask experts for their advice; and of course, we rely on our own accumulated expertise as artists, teachers, and craftspeople.

ARTnews RECOMMENDS
Prismacolor Scholar Art Pencils, Set of 24
These student-grade pencils from the biggest name in colored pencils sit at the top of our list for many reasons. First, they are economical, at a little more than 50 cents a pencil. Secondly, they deliver rich, blendable color that can lay down lightly or intensely. Their cores are softer than Prismacolor’s premier line of colored pencils, allowing students to practice blending colors, but they nevertheless resist breakage. This set also comes in a durable plastic case that opens to double as an upright holder you can stand on your desk.

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Derwent Academy Colored Pencil Sets
These rather highbrow sets may not be an intuitive buy for little artists, but it cinches the next spot on our list for a few reasons. First off—and this is a big one—these pencils come in a sturdy tin, so you can bid farewell to flimsy, dirty cardboard boxes. The pencils themselves are simply gorgeous: brilliantly hued 3.3-millimeter leads in a glossy black casing, finished with correspondingly colored ends. They’re a worthy purchase for the whole family. Because Derwent’s colored pencils are a step up from our first pick, expect to shell out a little more for these 12- and 24-pencil sets. Are they worth every penny? You bet.

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The Headlines

TOURISTS ALLEGEDLY BEHAVING BADLY. An Irish man in Brussels was captured on video climbing on a stone sculpture of a lion and nude figure outside the city’s stock exchange on Sunday and then apparently knocking off a torch that the figure was holding by accident, the Irish Times reports. Police later cuffed the suspect at a fast-food restaurant. The cost of restoring the piece was put at €17,600 (about $18,800) in early reports. It was a weird weekend in Europe. Footage has surfaced of a woman (said to be an American) cuddling up to and touching Copenhagen’s famed Little Mermaid (1913) sculpture by Edvard Eriksen on Saturday, Metro reports. Signs near the landmark counsel visitors not to touch the piece. One onlooker told the outlet, “There was a crowd of about 100 people and everyone was watching on really confused.”

ARTIST UPDATES. Sculptor Martin Puryear is unveiling a permanent piece at the Storm King Art Center in Upstate New York later this month, and got the profile treatment from the New York Times. ● Artist Derrick Adams, who opened a residency in his hometown, Baltimore, this year (The Last Resort Artist Retreat, it’s called), has a show up at Gagosian in Beverly Hills and was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times. ● And competing for the John Moores Painting Prize for the tenth time (against more than 3,000 people), Graham Crowley finally won, BBC News reports. Presented by Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, the biennial honor comes with £25,000 (about $31,100).

The Digest

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office recently issued warrants for three artworks by Egon Schiele on the claim they had been stolen from a Jewish art collector that was killed during the Holocaust.

The warrants were issued to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. New York prosecutors are arguing the artworks by Schiele from these institutions belong to the three living heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, who was forced to liquidate his assets during his internment at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

According to the New York Times, which first reported the news Wednesday, Grünbaum was a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist who was eventually killed at Dachau in 1941. Before his internment, Grünbaum’s art collection grew to nearly 500 pieces, with with at least 80 works by Schiele.

The warrants were for the watercolor-and-pencil drawing on paper Russian War Prisoner (1916) from the Art Institute of Chicago; the pencil-on-paper drawing Portrait of a Man (1917) from the Carnegie Museum of Art; as well as the watercolor-and-pencil on paper work Girl With Black Hair (1911) from Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum.

According to the New York Times, all the works were valued between $1 million and $1.5 million, and will be transported to New York at a later date.

Egyptian government officials have ordered the close of the contemporary art center Darb 1718 in Cairo, the Art Newspaper reported on Thursday. The center is being demolished for the construction of a new major road.

The head of the center’s local district and the deputy governor reportedly showed up at Darb 1718 and told staff to leave the building in 30 minutes.

“When we asked for an official notification, they could not provide us with anything,” Darb 1718 founder Moataz Nasr told the Art Newspaper.

One of the first cultural spaces in the city to host exhibitions, concerts, events, and workshops, Darb 1718 announced the news of its closure in an online petition, which has garnered more than 11,000 signatures since it was posted on July 27. Nasr also filed a lawsuit with the state council. These efforts have so far delayed the center’s demolition.

Meanwhile, Nasr has said the center’s social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram have been suspended.