Talmudista (The Talmudist)
Talmudista (The Talmudist), also recorded as Merengő zsidó (Pensive Jew), is a 1925 oil painting by György Rauscher, held at the Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum. It is one of his central New Objectivity works, and was among the sixteen pictures he showed at the 1927 Ernst Múzeum exhibition.
The painting shows a pale, sharp-featured young man seated almost frontally, his dark suit and hat in the manner of European Orthodox Jewish dress, against an angular background of cool blue-green planes. Light enters from what reads as an open door at the upper left, falling across a warm ochre diagonal. One hand is raised to his chin in a pensive gesture; the other rests below, the fingers of both drawn long and tapering. The space is shallow and stage-like, the palette cold blues and greens against rust and ochre.
The picture belongs to Rauscher’s New Objectivity portraits of people on the margins of society, where the sitter’s inner life matters more than outward likeness; the title names the sitter a Talmudist, an Orthodox Jewish young man given over to study and thought (see /biography/hungarian-years).
In Gálig’s reading, the elongated hands and the narrow, stage-like space connect Rauscher to Egon Schiele and to the German New Objectivity of Grosz and Dix (/bibliography#galig-2013).
The two titles are one work: it was exhibited in 1927 as Merengő Zsidó and catalogued in 1935 as Talmudista.
Record
- Archive ID: GR-0050
- Titles: Talmudista (Hungarian); The Talmudist (English). Alternate: Merengő zsidó (Pensive Jew).
- Year: 1925
- 1935 catalogue number: 47
- Medium: oil painting on canvas
- Dimensions: 84 × 64 cm
- Signature: lower right, Rauscher
- Attribution: confirmed
- Documentation basis: primary, with image
- Location: Klapka György Múzeum, Komárom (see
/klapka-muzeum) - Period: Hungarian years, 1922-1928
- Exhibitions: 1927 Ernst Múzeum group exhibition (as Merengő Zsidó); 1935 Nemzeti Szalon estate exhibition, no. 47
- Literature:
/bibliography#szamado-2019;/bibliography#galig-2013
Cite this record
GR-0050, Talmudista (1925), Klapka György Múzeum. The György Rauscher Archive, https://gyorgyrauscher.com/works/talmudista-1925 (last reviewed 2026-06-03).
