Lot 126: ROSENBERG, ISAAC (1890-1918, poet and painter)

PORTRAIT BY LONDON ART STUDIOS,
photograph, silver print, head and shoulders, in army uniform, 5 x 3 in (12.7 x 7.6 cm), stamped as was customary for use as a postcard.

Perhaps the most famous photograph of Rosenberg: it was taken in September 1917 at the insistence of his mother, Hacha. Contemporary photographs of Rosenberg are rare.

Malcolm Rogers notes in Camera Portraits, Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, 1989, about the example of this image held there: 'This photographic postcard is of a type that many a soldier would have made on leave to give to his family and friends, and is a notably unidealized image of the young Private and poet who hated Rupert Brooke's "begloried sonnets."'