Because of the persecutions they suffered, members of the Jewish communities in Europe therefore never felt to be in a position to take to painting until at least the 19th Century. As a result, only a few artists, in Britain and Germany notably, were active by the end of the 18th Century.
However, there was to be no tangible sign of the existence of a true Jewish School of painting before 1870. At that time, the Hungarian Isidore Kaufmann went on to become the most important Jewish genre painter. Travelling throughout Eastern Europe, Kaufmann was constantly in search of material in Jewish towns and villages sketching as he went. Today, his paintings are worth between US $ 30,000 and 200,000. Maurycy Gottlieb, born in Poland in 1856, was as much talented as Kaufmann but died prematurely at the age of 23.
Nevertheless, the Jewish painter the most expensive remains by far Marc Chagall whose works produced between 1910 and 1918 usually reach between US $ 6 millions and 16 millions. After him, Modigliani is worth between US $ 1 million and 10 millions and Pissarro, who was half Jewish, between $ 500,000 and 4 millions.
Chagall, played a leading role during the Soviet revolution during which he was appointed head of the Vitebsk Academy of Fine Arts. But after Malevitch's Supremacist ideas won support from the Revolutionary leaders he lost his post and went to Moscow where he worked actively for the Jewish Theatre before taking the wise decision to establish his new quarters in France in 1922.
While in Paris, Chagall remained impregnated by his origins and continued to produce Jewish and also Biblical scenes throughout the rest of his life. In his mind Jewish art was somewhat sacred and his own art revolved almost entirely around the Bible and Judaic traditions recalling that the atmosphere of Vitebsk, his home-town, was strangely mixed with that of Jerusalem. He often used to say that art deriving from the Bible was in fact naturally universal.
Chagall, Modigliani, Kisling, Soutine and Pascin formed the chore of the School of Paris within which Jewish painting blossomed intensely as France was a blessed land for Jewish painters who wanted to freely express their talents.