The Whitechapel Boys
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, writers, painters and poets tended to be upper class men (and occasionally women). The working classes were too busy earning a living to consider a ‘career’ that was unlikely to pay well, if at all.
But before the First World War new ‘groups’ of artists began to emerge. The word groups is slightly misleading, as the career choice is undoubtedly a solitary one. Sometimes it’s only later that the groups become apparent, often as the media decide to tag a movement, as Futurists, Angry Young Men, Punks or whatever.
But one group, which became known as ‘the Whitechapel Boys’ did have much in common - they also had a support network that helped them achieve their aims. Joseph Leftwich described the group, which included himself, Stephen Winsten, John Rodker, Isaac Rosenberg and, later, Mark Gertler and David Bomberg as ‘the slum children, the problem youth, the beneficiaries of the Board of Guardians and the soup kitchen, and some of us of the Jewish Educational Aid Society’.
The Whitechapel Boys tag may have been applied later (posthumously in the case of Isaac Rosenberg), but it was at least created by one of their number, in Leftwich. With little room in their overcrowded family homes, the men whould meet at Whitechapel’s Public Library and Art Gallery, which also gave them further reading and art to study.
Rosenberg and Bomberg had much reason to be grateful for the Jewish Educational Aid Society, while Rosenberg was also a relieved beneficiary of the time-honoured system of wealthy private patronage of the aspiring artist. Three wealthy Jewish women, Mrs Herbert Cohen, Henrietta Lowy and Deissa Joseph, paid Rosenberg’s fees at the Slade Schools of Art, where he studied from 1911 to 1914. Rosenberg, perhaps ironically, was also to receive a career prod from Ezra Pound - a great poet who would become a vitriolic anti-Semite. Pound recognised Rosenberg’s East End edge in his rather patronising recommendation to the editor of Poetry magazine in Chicago. ‘He has something in him, horribly rough but then “Stepney, East”‘, Pound wrote in 1913. Pound would also cross paths with another of the Whitechapel Boys, in John Rodker, who would later publish Pound’s work.
This generation were all born within a few years of each other in the early 1890s, and would all be of fighting age during the First World War. Whether they fought or not (some did some were conscientious objectors) the horrific slaughter would have a profound effect.
The Whitechapel Boys
Joseph Leftwich (born Lefkowitz), 1892-1984, was a critic and translated Yiddish works into English, notably ‘The Golden Peacock’ of Yiddish poetry in 1939. He wrote a biography of fellow East Ender Israel Zangwill in 1957. Other works include ‘The Tragedy of Anti-Semitism’ with AK Chesterton.
John Rodker (1894-1955), was a modern poet and essayist. A conscienscious objector during World War I, in 1919 he started the Ovid Press, which published TS Eliot and Ezra Pound. He would succeed Pound as foreign editor of New York magazine ‘The Little Review’.
Stephen Winsten (born Weinstein) lived from 1893-1991. He wrote works on his neighbour George Bernard Shaw and Henry Salt. Winsten married the sculptor Clara Birnberg and the pair became Quakers.
Mark Gertler (1891-1939) was one of Leftwich’s latter additions to the Whitechapel Boys. Born into poverty in Spitalfields, the painter’s best known work is ‘The Merry Go Round’, depicting the horrors of the First World War. It was described by his friend DH Lawrence as ‘the best modern picture I have seen’. Gertler is the character Loerke in Lawrence’s ‘Women in Love’, the inspiration for Gombauld in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Crome Yellow’ and a main character in Gibert Cannan’s novel ‘Mendel’. Rufus Sewell plays Gertler in the 1995 movie ‘Carrington’. Beset by illness, in commercial if not creative decline, and fearing the onset of World War II, he killed himself in 1939.
Isaac Rosenberg lived from 1890 to 1918. Uniquely talented as both a gifted painter and poet. Rosenberg was opposed to World War I but signed up, not through patriotism, but to ‘find a job’ and financially support his mother. Brushing aside the claims of better-known war poets such as Sassoon and Owen, critic Paul Fussell claims Rosenberg’s ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ as “the greatest poem of the war”. Rosenberg was killed, possibly by a sniper, at dawn on 1 April 1918 on the Somme, having just finished night patrol.
David Gershen Bomberg (1890-1957) was another who served on the Western Front during World War I. The experience profoundly changed his art, which moved from depersonalised shapes influenced by Futurism and Cubism to a more representational style. His journey from faith in ‘the machine age’ continued, as he moved to portraits and natural landscapes. He would later teach Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach.