Huvy Elisha’s life story begins in Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter, continues through Vienna, Prague and Britain, and later, upon her return to Israel, in Herzliya Pituah — before her family discovered that her art could generate a fortune.
By Shelly Kling | Photographs: Emil Salman | TheMarker, May 13, 2022
I make my way to the home of Huvy (Ahuva) Elisha, 95, in the middle of the week, shortly before Independence Day. Her son, Robert Elisha, leads me through the uneven streets of Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood. We reach a rusty, broken gate and cross a stone courtyard containing an overturned plastic chair, with bags and disposable plates scattered around it.
On the ground floor of the old building there is a lively flow of yeshiva students dressed in black and white. Elisha greets them. “My mother subsidizes them. There is a boarding school here for boys and young men who have lost their way a little. They are gathered here and given a home and a sense of direction,” he says as we climb the narrow stairs. “There is dirt, noise and commotion here all day long, and she accepts everything with love.” Elisha, a Breslov Hasid, is able to subsidize a boarding school for boys because of her great success in her field: her paintings sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
He opens an old wooden door and waits for me to enter the small, modest apartment. In one room, which apparently once served as the living room, stand sacred objects, books, ornate but worn armchairs, a glass cabinet filled with porcelain plates and elaborate silverware — all piled in disorder and covered with dust. In the second room sits Elisha, a small woman in a large armchair, a headscarf covering her hair. Behind her hangs a large print of one of her paintings, featuring a beloved recurring motif: red flowers on the seashore in a British coastal town, the landscape of her childhood.
Between the rooms is the studio she once used. During the previous five years she had stopped painting and spent her time in the apartment. Robert tells Huvy that I have come to write about her paintings, and I say how beautiful I find them. “I paint only happy things,” she says. “The world needs comfort.” Because of her fatigue and advanced age, the visit is brief.
The Mea She’arim apartment is a stark contrast — or perhaps a natural continuation — to King David Street, where the King David Hotel stands opposite the gallery managed by her son. A short walk away is the Waldorf Astoria, also included on our tour because of Elisha’s paintings. Her oils depict themes from the worlds of Torah and Hasidism: Jerusalem streets, scenes from the Bible, portraits of well-known rabbis and Jewish weddings. In 2012, one of her paintings sold at Bonhams in London for €63,600. Today, her works are sold at public auctions specializing in Judaica and Jewish art, for prices ranging from $500 to $30,000.
“Your daughter will not be a doctor — she will be a painter”
Elisha was born in Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter to a prosperous, observant merchant. When she was six, the family moved to Vienna because of her father’s business. From there they moved to Prague and London. During the Second World War and the Blitz on London, the family fled to the coastal town of Torquay in Devon, southwest Britain.
“Already in elementary school they saw that she was constantly doodling in her notebooks,” her son says. “She would draw instead of studying, and they asked her to make the scenery for the school plays. My grandmother argued with the headmistress because the headmistress told her, ‘Your daughter will not be a doctor — she will be a painter,’ and my grandmother did not want to accept that. Nevertheless, on that headmistress’s recommendation, my mother went to Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London. She was admitted as a gifted young student and graduated with honors.”
How did the family react to her art studies?
“They were easygoing, open-minded people.”
At 17, Elisha married Eli, a carpet merchant she had met in Britain. “He was a businessman and a supplier to Harrods, Liberty and Harvey Nichols. One day, a representative from Harrods called and told him that the Queen was going on a tour of Australia and that they wanted to lay out a distinguished carpet at the reception. Representatives from Buckingham Palace came to him and closed the deal. He received the designation given to stores that did business with the royal household — ‘By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen of England,’” her son says.
In 1968, the Elishas immigrated to Israel with their three children and settled in Herzliya Pituah. Huvy continued painting as a hobby but devoted most of her time to her children. “I grew up in Herzliya Pituah, in a traditional home. I would drive a Ferrari, while at the same time serving as a combat soldier in the 7th Brigade,” her son says.
According to Robert, during that period the family opened its home for Torah lessons given by Breslov Hasidim. Those lessons led to his mother’s growing religious commitment and to her decision to leave Herzliya Pituah for Mea She’arim. “She had grown tired of luxury homes and of that way of life. She wanted to return to her roots — to Jerusalem’s Bukharan Quarter.”
About 30 years before the article was published, Robert began dealing in his mother’s paintings. “Until then, my mother was generous — she gave her paintings away,” he explains. “But I reached a stage when I needed to support the family and think about the future. I took matters into my own hands and told her, ‘With all due respect to your generosity, we are going to turn this into a business.’”
How do you market your mother’s work?
“In the past, 20 years ago and more, I would physically go to galleries, mainly in New York, carrying photographs of the paintings. I would approach art agents and businesspeople who bought the paintings either for themselves or as an investment from which they hoped to profit in the future. Little by little, my mother made a name for herself and people began to know her. We opened a gallery in Tel Aviv in the late 1980s, at the corner of Frishman and Ben Yehuda streets. Later, in 2000, we opened a gallery in Jerusalem, in an excellent location opposite the Waldorf Astoria. Many tourists come. Some people walk in by chance, while others arrive in Israel after hearing about her and want to see and buy the work.”
How do you determine the price of each painting?
“It is a matter of instinct. There is demand and people know her. Sometimes I ask myself the same question you are asking: ‘Why this price?’ But that is how it is. You could also ask why Andy Warhol paintings sell for $200 million. The fact is that people buy them. She has her own touch. In one painting you can find Impressionism, Expressionism and Modernism. Usually, if you hang a painting on the wall, after a while you forget about it. But you do not forget her paintings. That is their power.”
Who is your target audience?
“My clientele consists of non-Jews and modern Jews, Americans or Canadians, mainly businesspeople who wear a kippah and take it off when they enter a business meeting. Some are religious but flexible, and they are an important part of my clientele.”
What do they find in these paintings?
“They hang them on their walls. Some own expensive art collections. They have paintings by Reuven Rubin — one of Israel’s greatest painters and a recipient of the Israel Prize for painting — and by Huvy Elisha. Her painting of dancing Hasidim, which also hangs in the Waldorf Astoria, speaks to everyone. When it was displayed in the gallery window, I came back late one night and saw three people looking at it — a non-Jew, a secular Jew and an ultra-Orthodox Jew. True, it is a painting of men wearing shtreimels, but look at their movement.”
How do non-Jewish customers connect with the subjects she paints?
“In this painting, for example, I explain that we are standing on the Mount of Olives and looking at the Old City of Jerusalem. Here are the olive trees, the Western Wall, and down on the left are modern buildings and skyscrapers. My mother placed New York here, and this figure comes outside and cries, ‘Master of the Universe, how long?’ The Jewish people are always persecuted, and here this man is crying out. In the center is the Third Temple.
“They also buy the wedding paintings, the streets with olive trees, illuminated Jerusalem, and the dancing Hasidim — her trademark. Non-Jews see it as the New Jerusalem, while we see it as the coming of the Messiah.
“Once, an older couple from Texas came in. The man looked at a picture and told me it depicted the grave of the Baal Shem Tov in Ukraine. I asked him, ‘Correct — how did you know?’ His wife said he was a minister, and every Sunday he delivered a sermon and used some of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings. ‘Well,’ I asked, ‘what do you say to that?’”
Did he buy the painting?
“No, but I sold it to someone else for $20,000. I also had a customer from Indonesia who bought a collection of 12 works.”
For how much?
“A very nice sum. I do not really understand myself what a Christian from Indonesia finds in my mother’s paintings, but he now has dancing Hasidim in his home, Abraham descending to Egypt, and two paintings of weddings in Jerusalem.”
Is there no dissonance between your mother being an ultra-Orthodox woman and an artist?
“First of all, we are all Jews. She has friends from every sector — from Tel Aviv, Kfar Shmaryahu and London. My mother goes with the flow.”
Every painting is the last one
Nicholas Forrest, an art journalist and critic who ran the Art Market Blog, named Elisha in 2012 as one of ten prominent Israeli artists whose works were worth following at auction, alongside Reuven Rubin, Nahum Gutman and Yaacov Agam.
On the other hand, conversations held that week with sources in the art world raised doubts about whether the commercial success of Elisha’s paintings reflected their artistic quality. In their view, at best it was old-fashioned art and at worst decorative Judaica. A contemporary Israeli artist explained that the artistic field in which Elisha worked operated alongside contemporary Israeli art as another, separate world, with different customers, painters and artistic criteria.
David Baruch, owner of Estim valuations, which appraises art and jewelry, said: “With all due respect, she is not in the league of Rubin, Gutman and Agam. There are other artists in the genre. These are paintings with a Jewish character, particularly popular among affluent traditional and religious Jews around the world, who display this type of picture in the luxury apartments they bought in Israel, especially in Jerusalem.”
Baruch added that according to his data, from 2007 until the publication of the article, 55 works by the artist had been sold around the world, 49 of them through the Israeli auction house Matsart, also located on King David Street in Jerusalem.
“There is no objective standard for setting the price of art,” Baruch said. “The value of an item is what people are willing to pay for it. The value is determined by the method of asking as much as possible and receiving a great deal of support from public relations. The fact that her paintings hang in the United States Embassy and in the Waldorf Astoria indicates that there is a well-oiled public-relations operation behind her.”
Robert had been troubled during the preceding two years by the effect of the coronavirus crisis on his business and by the fact that, because of his mother’s advanced age, her paintings had become a dwindling resource. She had stopped painting about five years earlier.
“The coronavirus was a catastrophe — two terrible years. No one walked into the gallery. I did make sales through dealers, but it was a period of survival. The market is now beginning to recover, but people still have a psychological problem. They hesitate; they do not know what will happen; they think twice before spending $60,000 on a painting, even if they love it. But I am not under pressure. We have always done everything without pressure. That is our advantage.”
What do you mean?
“When I sell a particular work, there is no replacement for it because my mother no longer paints. I will not sell below a certain price, also because the quantity is limited.”
How many paintings are left?
“There are paintings, thank God.”
Where are they?
Robert gestures toward himself and says with a smile: “Here, with me.”