Ancestors – 2025
Oil and graphite on canvas. H61 x W76
An indulgent double portrait of the artist’s two great-grandfathers. The artist was only aware of their appearance through surviving photographs, which he inherited. The studio portraits probably date from the 1890’s. Shared genetic traits with the artist are discernable. While both individuals are Ashkenazy Jews, they emigrated to South Africa from different geographic locations. But both their respective Jewish families were restricted by the then Russian Empire, to reside within the Pale of Settlement which included modern Belarus and Moldova, much of Lithuania, Ukraine and east-central Poland. Samuel (Malykont) Cohen on the left came from Warsaw in Poland and Solomon Gordon came from a small Shtetl (village) Neustadt Sigund, three kilometres East of the border with East Prussia, in Lithuania.
Samuel Cohen had gone to the Cape of Good Hope in the late 1860’s or early 1870’s and Solomon Gordon arrived in Cape Town in 1881/2. Both established themselves in the then booming Ostrich Feather industry in and around the Oudtshoorn region of the little Karoo some 420 kms East of Cape Town. Both men became relatively successful. While not much is known about Samuel’s fortunes, Solomon was financially able to send both his eldest daughter and son to University in Cape Town. Selina Gordon became the first Jewish woman to graduate from a South African University in 1899 and Victor became a lawyer in 1904. Their social standing is reflected in their semi-formal attire. To contrast and enhance the dissimilarity between the two men – the formal device of different jacket-patterning has been fully exploited by the artist.
By creating this image the artist has attempted to establish an ancestral rapport for himself with these two forebears, both long since deceased. Samuel died in 1903 and Solomon in 1919.
The two portraits, although probably known to each other in their small Jewish communities, may well not have been acquainted. In this image the artist forces a close visual correspondence. It could feasibly be interpreted that the two are in conversation – perhaps about the fact that they have been perpetually forced into a close union by their future artist/relative, who only exists as a direct result of the mixing of their bloodlines.
The artist was named after Solomon’s eldest son Victor (as his wife’s née surname was Victor or Avigdor). In turn the artist later named his daughter Sarah after Solomon’s wife.
