The Ecstasy of Saint Augustine

A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE

This painting depicting Saint Augustine in ecstasy, passed through the hands of a number of Austrian and Hungarian creatives who converged in New York City in the wake of the World War II. The painting first appears in the New York gallery of brothers Elkan and Abris Silberman, who were forced to sell part of their stock after the Anschluss. They transferred the rest of their stock to Hungary, and later to New York, where they re-established their gallery. Abris Silberman gifted the present painting to his close friend, the author Nicolas Halasz, also of Austro-Hungarian descent. Halasz’s most famous book, Captain Dreyfus: The Story of Mass Hysteria, tells the story of the Dreyfus affair and served as the basis for the 1958 film I Accuse, directed by and starring José Ferrer.

Halasz then passed on the painting to his friend, Eva Zeisel. Zeisel was born in Hungary to a prominent family, and began her artistic training at Hungarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts at the age of seventeen. After completing her training, she rose through the ranks of German and Russian pottery factories, finally being named as the artistic director of the Russian China and Glass Trust. In 1936 Zeisel was arrested in Moscow after being falsely accused of conspiring to assassinate Joseph Stalin. She was imprisoned in Russia for a total of sixteen months, twelve of which were spent in solitary confinement. In 1937 she was returned to Vienna, from which she fled to England, narrowly escaping Nazi persecution. In that same year she and her husband immigrated to New York, where she took a position teaching at Pratt Institute. An exhibition of her work took place at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946. entitled Modern China, it was the first exhibition held at the museum to center on the work of a female designer, and held concurrently with the groundbreaking Georgia O'Keeffe retrospective. Zeisel continued her career as a ceramicist and designer until her passing in 2011 at the age of 105. Eva was a great admirer of Saint Augustine, and enjoyed this painting in her New York home for many years.