Portrait of Paul Ward Brody

Strokes of charcoal, softly modeled in some areas and boldly punctuated in others, bring to life the handsome Bostonian Paul Ward Brody. He might be mistaken for one of John Singer Sargent’s debonair sitters of the 1920s, drawn in a style that became popular with an international social circle. The artist, Jacob Binder, had studied with Sargent before forging a successful career in his own right. Binder, of Russian Jewish descent, specialized in respectful paintings of Jewish sitters in the Boston area, including members of Brody’s family. Binder based his 1927 portrait of Brody on a photograph of the lawyer in a natty suit, posing with confidence as a young gentleman. Just a year before, a group of patrons donated Binder’s "The Talmudist" to the MFA collections as a protest against Sargent's offensive representation of Synagoga in his murals for the Boston Public Library. "The Talmudist" would stand, noted one of Binder's contemporaries, as an example of “the most typical presentation that a dignified, self-respecting artistic Jewry could make.”