Art, Identity and Cosmopolitanism

«Samuel Shaw’s engaging new book on William Rothenstein takes a figure who has frequently made a fleeting appearance in texts on twentieth-century British art and puts him centre stage. Informed by rigorous research in archives and private collections in Europe and the United States, Shaw’s discussion of Rothenstein’s work as an artist, campaigner, educator and organiser will be of interest to anyone seeking out more complex cultural histories of this period. Shaw’s narrative is an impressive balance of detailed discussion about an individual’s career and a larger argument about the tensions between the nationalism and cosmopolitanism that shaped the early twentieth-century art world.»

(Sarah Victoria Turner, Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

«In this superbly well-researched book, Samuel Shaw argues convincingly that a commitment to British identity, including the experience of British Jews, is in no way at odds with a cosmopolitan openness to artistic activity across the whole of Europe, Asia and beyond. This will be the standard work on Rothenstein in his time for years to come and required reading for anyone interested in the international artworld of the period.»

(Elizabeth Prettejohn, Professor of History of Art, University of York)

The artist, writer and teacher William Rothenstein (1872–1945) was a significant figure in the British art world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was a conspicuously cosmopolitan character: born to a German-Jewish family in the north of England, he attended art school in Paris, wrote the first English monograph on the Spanish artist Goya, and became a prominent collector and supporter of Indian art. However, Rothenstein’s cosmopolitanism was a complex affair. His relationship with his English, European and Jewish identities was ever-changing, responding to wider shifts on the political and cultural stage. This book traces those changes through the artist’s writings and through his art, analysing a range of paintings, drawings and prints created from the 1890s into the 1930s. This book – the first in-depth study of Rothenstein’s art – draws on extensive archival material to situate his practice within broader debates regarding transnational exchange and the development of modern art in Britain.