Portrait of Dottie Konstam 1915
(also known as Mrs Alfred Kohnstamm)

ALFRED WOLMARK (1877-1961, British)

Portrait of Dottie Konstam 1915
(also known as Mrs Alfred Kohnstamm)

oil on canvas
113.0 x 87.5 cm; 141.5 x 116.0 cm (framed)
signed with artist's monogram and dated lower right: AW/ 15.
bears inscription on stretcher verso: HALL/ A HALL

Provenance:
Alfred Wolmark, London
Thence by descent to his daughter, Diana Hall, New South Wales

Exhibited:
Rediscovering Wolmark: A Pioneer of British Modernism, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, London, 5 September - 7 November 2004; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, 27 November 2004 - 30 January 2005, cat.40

Reference:
Dickson, R. & MacDougall, S. (eds.), Rediscovering Wolmark: A Pioneer of British Modernism, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, London, 2004, p.53, cat.40 (illus. front cover [detail], p.44)

Estimate: $30000 - 50000

Result Hammer: $90000

The four paintings presented here as lots 50-53 mark the Australian auction debut of Jewish émigré artist Alfred Wolmark, who became a leading exponent of Post-Impressionism in Britain during the early twentieth century. The present works have been held by the artist’s family since their conception, and come to this sale from the collection of Wolmark’s daughter, Diana Hall. 

Born in Warsaw in 1877, Alfred Wolmark fled persecution in Eastern Europe and arrived in England with his family as a young child. The Wolmarks settled in London’s East End, which was already home to a vibrant community of Jewish migrants. Wolmark briefly studied art at London’s Royal Academy in the 1890s, where he exhibited his work from 1901 to 1936.

In the years immediately preceding World War I, Wolmark formed a close friendship with the French-born sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) and the two artists depicted one another in a series of portraits.1 From around 1910 onwards, Wolmark’s art became more conspicuously modern in style, which saw him adopt a bolder palette and densely layered, broken brushwork. Though Wolmark was never part of any formal group or school, his work is often compared to that of Walter Sickert and other members of the Camden Town Group, as well as the Scottish Colourists.          

Wolmark’s Portrait of Dottie Konstam 1915 depicts the wife of Alfred Kohnstamm, a London businessman who became one of the artist’s most important patrons. Appearing in three-quarter view, Dottie is dressed in black and white, holding a large parasol with both hands.  By 1915, Wolmark was working on poster, costume and set designs for the theatre, and the simplified composition of this portrait reveals the artist’s ‘increasing fascination with design’.2 As Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall note of the present work:

the deft weaving together of her figure, striped parasol and the plain red background appear to have been ‘based on a complex geometrical plan’. [The painting shows] a poster-like treatment in the flattened areas of vibrant colour and the careful cropping and placing of the figure within the confines of the canvas.3

Portrait of Dottie Konstam was illustrated on the front cover of the catalogue for the major exhibition Rediscovering Wolmark: A Pioneer of British Modernism, held at the Ben Uri Gallery, London and the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull in 2004-05.4 

In the Sun (The Artist’s Wife, Bessie) c1911 and Breton Fisherman c1911 were both painted during Wolmark’s extended honeymoon in the French fishing port of Concarneau.  Located on the southern coast of Brittany, Concarneau had become a popular destination for plein-air painters during the late nineteenth century.5 Wolmark was enchanted by the local people of the picturesque town and their traditional ways of life.  In the Sun shows the artist’s wife Bessie in the traditional dress of a Breton peasant woman, her arms folded in her lap.  Wolmark’s canvas is suffused with brilliant sunlight, which casts the facial features of the sitter into relief.  The picture plane is brought close to the surface with flat expanses of colour in a manner reminiscent of Gauguin, with carefully drawn contours and heavy impasto. 

Breton Fisherman is a close study of a local working man in Concarneau. Wolmark’s subject gazes at the viewer directly, clad in a broad cap with a basket over his left arm.  This half-length portrait is revealing of Wolmark’s abilities as a draughtsman, and evident sympathy for his subject.  Wolmark’s time in Concarneau marked a particularly fruitful and significant stage of his career, as he fully embraced modernist approaches to colour and light in depicting scenes from everyday life.  It is estimated that Wolmark completed some ninety works during this ten-week sojourn.

Wolmark’s Sketch for Flatiron Building, New York was painted during a ten-month visit to New York from 1919 to 1920. Erected on Broadway in 1902, the Fuller (or ‘Flatiron’) Building had twenty stories of limestone on a steel frame, and at 300 feet it was the world’s tallest building until 1908.  In the present work, Wolmark depicts the building as a towering symbol of modernity. Extending the full length of the image, the ‘Flatiron’ is surrounded by a halo of loose, impressionistic brushstrokes.   Wolmark created several paintings of this remarkable structure, including one example which hangs in the New York offices of the UK Mission to the United Nations.6         

Footnotes

1. Silber, E., ‘Three Portraits and a Friendship: Wolmark and Gaudier-Brzeska,’ in Dickson, R. & MacDougall, S. (eds.), Rediscovering Wolmark: A Pioneer of British Modernism, Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, London, 2004, p.25
2. Dickson, R. & MacDougall, S., ‘Hurrah for the New Art! The Emergence of Wolmark the Colourist,’ in Dickson, R. & MacDougall, S., op. cit., p.41
3. Ibid.
4. Dickson, R. & MacDougall, S., op. cit.
5. Ibid., p.33
6. ‘The Flatiron Building, New York 1919,’ Government Art Collection, UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport, London, accessed March 2025: https://artcollection.dcms.gov.uk/artwork/17230/

Catherine Baxendale & Peter Risdon

Peter Risdon is an art historian based in the United Kingdom. He worked for the British Library for over 30 years and is the author of various publications on British art, including Harold Harvey: Painter of Cornwall (2024, with Kenneth McConkey and Pauline Sheppard). Peter is currently preparing a biography and catalogue raisonné of Alfred Wolmark.

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