Eastern Jewish Wedding Feast

Koch: The bridal couple and older and younger men and women are still sitting at the table. A bottle of vodka standing on the table, drunk to the brim, shows that plenty has been drunk. This drunkenness, however, does not show itself in exuberance but in sentimentality, which tends towards mawkishness. A violinist plays the appropriate music. The picture as a whole is kept very dark, so that especially the illuminated faces stand out and everything else disappears. In terms of painting style, it is inconceivable without the Impressionists, but it allows their means and overall effect to recede to the point of imperceptibility and is most reminiscent of Delacroix. In any case it is a masterpiece. Oil. Size of a medium salon painting. Gilded stucco frame. By a very well-known Jewish-Polish painter who, according to my information, worked mainly in Paris. It is signed with his full name. The name, however, has slipped my mind, a Polish name. The picture was probably painted between 1910 and 15. The painting originally had a very high market price and was commissioned by Baroness Wilhelm von Rothschild. Because of the high price, the then old and impoverished woman refused to accept the painting. To do the good customer a favour, my uncle, the jeweller Louis Koch in Frankfurt am Main, took over and gave it to my wife and me. Format lying rectangle