Isaac M. Wise

John Aubery (Kassel, Germany 1810-1893 Cincinnati, OH)
Cincinnati, OH, 1879
Oil on canvas on panel, h. 99 x w. 66 in.
Signature: Lower left recto “J Aubery Cincinnati 1879”
Cincinnati Skirball Museum, 41.251

When this life-size portrait was painted, Isaac Mayer Wise (1819—1900) was sixty years old. Twenty-five years prior, he had come to Cincinnati to serve K.K. Bene Yeshurun (now Wise Temple). Four years prior, in 1875, he had founded Hebrew Union College, North America’s first institution of higher Jewish education and the academic, spiritual, and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism. Six years prior he had founded the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, now the Union for Reform Judaism. Thirteen years earlier, in 1866, he had dedicated the Plum Street Temple, an imposing and exotic structure modeled after the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, boasting slender pillars and thirteen domes. Wise was a man larger than life, a member of Cincinnati’s elite, when the board of K.K. Bene Yeshurun commissioned Cincinnati painter John Aubery to produce a portrait commemorating Rabbi Wise’s twenty-five years of service to the congregation.

Aubery was born in Kassel, Germany, and painted in Paris at the court of Louis Philippe. Later, he went to Rome for five years before coming to Cincinnati about 1853. A religious, historical and portrait painter, he was influential and much sought after by Cincinnati’s most prominent citizens. Among his sitters were industrialists, politicos, philanthropists and civic leaders including Thomas Emery, Miles Greenwood, Alphonso Taft, and Marcus Fechheimer (see HERE).

After being in storage for several years, the Wise portrait underwent major conservation in 2015-2016 through the generosity of the Judy Lucas Skirball Museum Education and Exhibitions Fund. Restored to its former glory, it takes its rightful place among the treasures of this historic campus.