Lot 47A: ISRAEL HERSHBERG B. 1948

initialed and dated 86 lower left

17 1/4 by 21in.<br><br>43.8 by 53.4cm

oil on linen

New York, Forum Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by Israel Hershberg, Feb. 13 - March 29, 2003

In the Marlborough Gallery exhibition catalogue of 2001, Israel Hershberg discusses his paintings with Mordechai Omer. Answering Omer's question as to why the artist call these paintings 'tree portraits', Hershberg replies: "... I don't think of them as landscapes. The whole idea came out of the recognition that I have been having this recurring visual experience when looking at these trees ever since I came to Jerusalem seventeen years ago. It is because their shapes have a way of drawing you to them, they ask you to isolate them, to disregard their connection to the earth, and they move you up, heavenward, similar to a church steeple. It's clearly what church steeples are meant to do. I found myself so drawn to them (the trees), the experience of looking at them so strong, over time that is, that there was no avoiding painting that experience. These trees would have to be plucked out of the landscape, as they demanded of me, and therefore conceived in pictorial terms in a way that would be different. The portrait came to mind. I paint these as though I were painting a portrait of a person, looking for the same things: likeness, presence, individuality, within the shared aloneness of painter and sitter." (Israel Hershberg interviewed by Mordechai Omer in Israel Hershberg: Tree Portraits, Marlborough Gallery, New York, 2001, Tel Aviv Museum, 2002 (exhibition catalogue), p. 6).