The Chicken Coop, 1939: Ukrainian Jewish Woman Artist Colourist Landscape Oil on Canvas

Women artists of the 19th and early 20th Century are fascinating to me. By definition, were fearless, unconventional, adventurous: they needed to be, to carve out their place in a still male-dominated world. Their stories deserve to be told. Moussia Toulman, a Jewish girl born in the Ukraine, believed that the world was open and that opportunity was awaiting her, but. the war changed her life.

Moussia moved to Israel via Turkey when she was 19 years old. Just a few months after her arrival she married but didn’t forgo her ambition to study art.

She enrolled at the’ Betzalel’ Institute in Jerusalem and completed her studies there in 1926. Ambitious and keen to take her studies further, she moved to Paris in 1929, the undisputed capital of the arts at the time. She forged relationship with fellow artists, writers and intellectuals, exhibited her work at the Salon des Independents and had a one-man show just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

It is said that all the works she exhibited in this exhibition were lost without a trace during the war, but excitingly, the painting presented here, painted in 1939, dates from this very period. As a Jew, Moussia Toulman erred around France during the war years, moving from one hiding place to another.

After the war, Moussia Toulman continued painting but was reluctant to exhibit her works. She became a well-known public figure and volunteered for aid programmes for Holocaust survivors, especially orphans. Later on she founded together with fellow artists Mane Katz, Jacques Atlan and others an organisation with aided Israeli artists during their stay in Paris.

In addition to painting, Moussia Toulman wrote poetry, published articles and was involved in art criticism.

A major retrospective of Moussia's work was held at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod in 2003.

Our oil on canvas by Moussia Toulman is signed and dated 1939 at the lower right and mesures 50 x 61 cm. The stretcher bars have been replaced. The overall framed size is 58.5 x 70 cm.

Nous parlons français, und wir sprechen auch Deutsch! Paintings may be viewed in Norwich and in Paris, as well as in London and Cambridge by appointment. Please contact us if you would like further details and images of an artwork.