🖌️🎨 Yudel Moiseevich Pen (Id. יודל פּען, other readings of the name - Yehuda, Yudl, Yudel, Yuri; 1854-1937)

 🖌️🎨 Yudel Moiseevich Pen (Id. יודל פּען, other readings of the name - Yehuda, Yudl, Yudel, Yuri; 1854-1937) - an outstanding portrait artist, teacher.
Style: realism
Yudel Pen was the teacher of a whole galaxy of brilliant Jewish artists: Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Joseph Zadkine, David Yakerson, Ilya Chashnik.
Even in school, Yudel could draw everything he saw in a matter of seconds. But instead of enthusiastic reviews, he received a barrage of stern moralizing from his cheder teacher about the prohibition of depicting people. Orphaned early, he then got a job as an apprentice to a painter.
The painter, who saw his sketches, had no doubt that he would hear more about his apprentice, but he was in no hurry to let go of the talent that brought him income and new customers.
One day he came to accept the work of his student and, admiring the staircase he had painted, grabbed the railing. Imagine his surprise when his hand simply slid through the air, not finding support: the handrails to the stairs were drawn, but with such detail that it was impossible to distinguish them from the real ones. At that moment, the painter realized that he could no longer keep such a talent in his workshop - the boy received a bonus in the amount of half a year's salary, and this was more than enough for him to leave for St. Petersburg.
In 1880, Yudel Pen entered the Academy of Arts.
After graduating from the Academy, he lived in Dvinsk and Riga, where he met Baron N. Korf, who invited the artist to his Vitebsk estate, where the baron's friends visited - I. Repin, Yu. Klever and other artists.
In 1891, Yudel Pen settled in Vitebsk and a year later opened a private School of Drawing and Painting there, which existed until 1919 - the first Jewish art school, which was transformed by Marc Chagall into the Vitebsk Art School (existed until 1941).
There was almost nothing in his house except paintings - all the rooms were hung with them. Pen refused to sell his works, which he did not create to order - even the Tretyakov Gallery, which wanted to get several of his paintings, was refused. And to all the questions from his perplexed relatives about why he didn’t sell his paintings when he himself was in a rather dire situation, he would answer: “Children, I don’t sell my inspiration.”
Until the end of his days, Pen didn’t have his own family. Of course, he fell in love, had affairs, and what affairs they were. Among his lovers, for example, was the daughter of the local governor. He painted her in the nude style – and Pen was offered fabulous sums for these paintings, but he kept them for himself.
In response to questions about why he didn’t start a family, Pen would invariably answer: “I could become a husband, a father, and a grandfather, but what kind of artist would I be then?”
He spent the last years of his life completely alone, looked after by his sister – and cousins would come in from time to time with questions about selling paintings, receiving another refusal.
These same relatives became the main suspects in the criminal case of the murder of Yudel Pen. The body of the 82-year-old artist, hacked to death with an axe, was found in his apartment on March 1, 1937. Pen's relatives claimed that they had met the artist the day before with a stranger, whom Pen introduced as a former student.
But the local investigation "established" that Pen's cousin dreamed of his collection so much that she offered to marry him with her daughter. Pen refused, and then she began to constantly send her children to him, trying to find out where the artist kept his money. As a result, the entire family of Pen's sister, nine people, was arrested and convicted. The motive for their crime was recognized as the fact that the artist intended to give all his paintings to the city after his death, and not leave them to the "family".
However, an investigator from Minsk, who came to Vitebsk to monitor the high-profile case, voiced a completely different version. Pen's collection included paintings in which the wives of many city officials were captured in the nude style. For example, the local investigator who was in charge of the case of Pen's murder. The Minsk specialist suggested that Pen was killed by the Vitebsk investigator out of jealousy - after which he was ordered to complete the investigation.
After Pen's death, his art gallery was created in Vitebsk, where almost 800 of the artist's works were exhibited.

But after the end of World War II, only a small part of the works returned to Vitebsk, the rest are still listed as missing.

The surviving works are stored in the Vitebsk Art Museum.

Almost every painting depicts the everyday life of the shtetl Jews of the last century, their world filled with secret dreams, sorrows and joys - a world skillfully and subtly captured by the Jewish artist Yudel Pen.

Sources: Arthive; Alexey Viktorov; zhiznteatr.mirtesen.