Clara Klinghoffer

(Szczerzec [Shchyrets], Ukraine 1900 - 1970 London)

Woman in Black, 1940

oil on canvas
signed and dated lower left ‘C.KLINGHOFFER/ 1940’

81 x 61 cm.
(framed 102 x 82 cm.)

in a period frame

Provenance

Private collection, New York, until 2024.

Klinghoffer can loosely be referred to as a ‘Whitechapel Girl’, as a Jewish émigré in East London who knew and associated with the ‘Whitechapel Boys’, whose members included Mark Gertler, David Bomberg among others. As a young girl, Clara was spotted sketching customers in a corner of her parents’ milliners shop, and they were encouraged to send her to study at the Sir John Cass College of Art, before winning scholarships to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and finally the Slade from 1919-1921.

When she was still studying at the Slade in 1920, Klinghoffer was hailed as ‘the girl who draws like Raphael’, and immediately found grace and favour as a portraitist, with her first One-Man show at the prestigious Hampstead Art Gallery, in May of that year, to rave reviews. The Jewish Chronicle noted that ‘Clara Klinghoffer... has clearly proved to be a truly great artist. Her drawings are very beautiful and quite remarkable for an artist scarcely out of her teens. [She] has been influenced by the Great Masters Raphael and Leonardo... yet her outlook is entirely Modern...’

The present portrait dates to 1940, the first year after Klinghoffer emmigrated to New York with her husband, the Dutch Jewish journalist Joop Stoppelman, with whom she had been living between London, Paris and Amsterdam in the 1930s. Notably, she was introduced to New York society by her friend and fellow artist, Laura Knight:

“My dear Earl… Mr & Mrs Stoppelman, our friends, are visiting the States, and as they know very few people, I am venturing to give them an introduction to yourself and Dorothy. Mrs Stoppelman, whose professional name is ‘Clara Klinghoffer’, is a very distinguished and talented painter whose work is highly thought of here in England, and is an old and dear friend of mine…” (in a letter of 11 May 1939).

As such, it’s a portrait that bridges the stylistic shift between Klinghoffer’s early works and her later American portraits, for which she would become much sought after.