‘Sabbath Eve Meal at the Hotel’, an Oil by Dora Holzhandler

#18214: ‘Sabbath Eve Meal at the Hotel’, an Oil by Dora Holzhandler
British, dated 1988
Canvas: Height 66cm, width 66cm, depth 2cm
Frame: Height 83cm, width 83cm, depth 7cm

This square oil on canvas by Dora Holzhandler shows families at candlelit tables for the Sabbath meal in a hotel dining room, seen from above.
The room is viewed from a high vantage point, its floor laid as a black and white chequerboard. Seven tables with white cloths are set with two-branch candlesticks, bottles of red wine, glasses and plates. Around them, on blue chairs, sit families and couples: bearded men in black coats and hats, women in yellow, green and pink dresses, and children. A waiter in a white jacket crosses the room with a menu, and at the lower right a couple arrives arm in arm, the woman in a blue gown with an orange stole.
Along the top of the composition, a long buffet table stands against a wall of blue and green tiles. It is laid with candlesticks, a candelabrum, dishes of fruit and fish and vases of flowers, and attended by a chef and a woman in an apron. Three pictures hang on the wall, one inscribed ‘Kosher’ with Hebrew lettering and another ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. At the upper right, a curtained window opens onto the sea at night under a full moon and stars, with sailing boats, a palm tree and a row of national flags along the shore.
The scene is laid out in flat areas of colour, with rounded, simplified figures. The chequered floor, tiled wall and rows of tables set up a repeating pattern across the canvas.
The canvas is signed and dated lower right ‘DORA HOLZHANDLER 88’. The backboard is inscribed ‘SABBETH EVE MEAL at THE HOTEL’ and ‘26" x 26"’, and the canvas is stamped on the reverse with the artist’s name. It is presented in a carved giltwood frame in the Louis XV manner, with scrolling foliage and flowerheads.
Scenes of Jewish family life, religious festivals and the Sabbath form a large part of Dora Holzhandler’s work. She was born in Paris in 1928 to Polish-Jewish parents and spent part of her childhood with a Catholic farming family in Normandy. On her return to Paris, her maternal grandfather, a rabbi, encouraged her interest in Jewish tradition. The family moved to London in 1934. After a period of study in Paris, she enrolled in 1948 at the Anglo-French Art Centre in St John’s Wood, where her naive manner was first encouraged and where she met her husband, the fellow student George Swinford. She held her first solo exhibition at Helen Lessore’s Beaux Arts Gallery in 1954 and went on to show at the Portal, Grosvenor and Langton galleries in London, as well as in France and the United States. Her work draws on folk art and on the example of Chagall and Matisse, and reflects her dual commitment to Judaism and to the Buddhism she took up in the 1950s. The Ben Uri Gallery held a retrospective, ‘Outside In or Inside Out’, in 2006. Her paintings are in the Ben Uri Collection, the Jewish Museum London, Brighton and Hove Museums and the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow. She died in London in 2015. With its kosher dining room, Sabbath candles and night view of the sea, the painting sets the ritual of the Friday-night meal in the shared space of a holiday hotel.
$12,750