Samuel (Sam) Rabin, originally Samuel Rabinovitch, (20 June 1903 – 20 December 1991) was an English sculptor, artist, teacher, singer, wrestler and Olympic bronze medalist.
Family and early life
Rabin, who was Jewish, was born Samuel Rabinovitch on 20 June 1903 at Dewhurst Street,
Cheetham,
North Manchester. He was the son of Jacob Rabinovitch (1872–1962) and Sarah Rabinovitch (née Kraselschikow, 1879–1961), both Imperial Russian Jewish exiles from
Vitebsk (now in
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...
). His father was a cap cutter and later a wholesale
milliner
Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter.
Historically, milliners, typically women shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of ...
; his mother was a jewellery assembler.
During his childhood, the family moved to
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
where Rabin grew up and where his parents encouraged his talent for drawing. In 1914 Rabin won a
scholarship
A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.
Scholarsh ...
to the Manchester Municipal School of Art making him, at the age of 11, the youngest pupil ever to attend the college. There he was taught drawing by French artist
Adolphe Valette. In 1921 he moved to the
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
in London where he continued his studies under
Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.
He was one of the first British arti ...
until 1924.
In about 1935, Rabin married Ida Lily Shuster, but they were divorced. In 1956, he married Frances Kaye (formerly Lucienne Karpeles, 1917–1988). The couple had one son, David, born in 1960.
Career
![55Broadway SamuelRabinovich WestWind](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/55Broadway_SamuelRabinovich_WestWind.jpg)
After the Slade, Rabin studied in Paris where he met and was greatly impressed and influenced by sculptor
Charles Despiau
Charles Despiau (November 4, 1874 – October 28, 1946) was a French sculptor.
Early life
Charles-Albert Despiau was born at Mont-de-Marsan, Landes and attended first the École des Arts Décoratifs and later the École nationale supérieure de ...
.
Rabin's own sculpture from this time is little known as he was a perfectionist and destroyed work that he considered unsatisfactory. In 1928, working under his full surname, he was commissioned by architect
Charles Holden
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...
to carve ''West Wind'', one of eight personifications of the
four winds for the headquarters of the
Underground Electric Railways Company of London
The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL), known operationally as the Underground for much of its existence, was established in 1902. It was the holding company for the three deep-level "tube"A "tube" railway is an und ...
at
55 Broadway. The sculpture was partly completed in-situ on the building. In 1930, he produced his only other public sculptures; two decorative winged masks, ''The Past'' and ''The Future'', for the ''
Daily Telegraph
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'' building in
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...
. These were carved on the building directly from the scaffold.
Both commissions were well received at the time, but Rabin was unable to make a living as a sculptor and turned to another career – wrestling, for which he abbreviated his surname.
Rabin was physically strong and had boxed and wrestled as an amateur to fund his art.
He won a bronze medal in the middleweight division of the
free-style wrestling at the
1928 Olympics in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
.
Rabin turned professional in 1932 and fought as ''Rabin the Cat'' and ''Sam Radnor the Hebrew Jew'' across Britain.
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda (; born Sándor László Kellner; hu, Korda Sándor; 16 September 1893 – 23 January 1956)[The Private Life of Henry VIII
''The Private Life of Henry VIII'' is a 1933 British film directed and co-produced by Alexander Korda and starring Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Merle Oberon and Elsa Lanchester. It was written by Lajos Bíró and Arthur Wimperis for London F ...](_blank)
'' in 1933 and as Mendoza, a Jewish prize-fighter, in ''
The Scarlet Pimpernel
''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the same title (co-authored with Montague Barstow) enjoyed a long run in London, having ...
'' in 1934.
Despite lacking any formal musical training, Rabin was a talented
baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...
and worked professionally during the 1940s singing with
Stars in Battledress
Stars in Battledress (SiB) was an organisation of entertainers who were members of the British Armed Forces during World War II.
History
In Britain, during the Second World War, entertainment was considered an essential to keep morale high. I ...
and sang operatic arias with the army's Classical Music Group. In 1946 he auditioned for
La Scala
La Scala (, , ; abbreviation in Italian of the official name ) is a famous opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the ' (New Royal-Ducal Theatre alla Scala). The premiere performan ...
's conductor,
Victor de Sabata
Victor de Sabata (10 April 1892 – 11 December 1967) was an Italian conductor and composer. He is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished operatic conductors of the twentieth century, especially for his Verdi, Puccini and Wagner.
De ...
.
In 1949, Rabin began teaching drawing at
Goldsmiths College of Art in
New Cross
New Cross is an area in south east London, England, south-east of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Lewisham and the SE14 postcode district. New Cross is near St Johns, Telegraph Hill, Nunhead, Peckham, Brockley, Deptford and Greenwich, ...
, London. His disciplined teaching style including the production of demonstration works, followed that of his own teacher, Valette. His students included
Mary Quant
Dame Barbara Mary Quant, Mrs Plunket Greene, (born 11 February 1930)The Mary Quant exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2019-20 stated her year of birth as 1930, and that she became a student at Goldsmiths College around 1950. is a ...
,
Bridget Riley
Bridget Louise Riley (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.
Early life and education
Riley was born on 24 April 1931 in West Norwood, No ...
and
Tom Keating
Thomas Patrick Keating (1 March 1917 – 12 February 1984) was an English art restorer and famous art forger who claimed to have faked more than 2,000 paintings by over 100 different artists. The total estimated of the profits of his forgeries ...
. He left Goldsmiths in 1965, due to differences over teaching methods and taught at Bournemouth College of Art until 1985 and then at Poole Art Centre until shortly before his death in December 1991.
Works
Little of Rabin's work from before his time at Goldsmiths College survived his critical destruction and an accidental destruction by a wartime landlady. Much of what exists are figure studies prepared as demonstrations for students and coloured boxing scenes produced with thickly applied wax crayons of his own making. Rabin exhibited rarely, but had a retrospective at
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London, which opened to the public in 1817. It was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination. Dulwich is the oldest publi ...
in 1985–86. He also exhibited at Southampton City Art Gallery 8 Feb – 23 March 1986 and Salford Art Gallery 17 April – 23 May 1986.
Collections containing his work include the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, the
Government Art Collection
The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...
and the
Musée National du Sport in Paris.
See also
*
List of select Jewish wrestlers
Notes and references
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabin, Samuel (artist)
1903 births
1991 deaths
People from Cheetham Hill
Olympic wrestlers of Great Britain
Wrestlers at the 1928 Summer Olympics
British male sport wrestlers
Olympic bronze medallists for Great Britain
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London
British architectural sculptors
British Jews
Jewish sculptors
Modern sculptors
English operatic baritones
Olympic medalists in wrestling
Jewish wrestlers
English people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
20th-century British sculptors
British male sculptors
20th-century English male singers
20th-century English singers
Medalists at the 1928 Summer Olympics
20th-century British male artists