SAM RABIN
A Life
5th April to 5th May 2024

Preview drinks Thursday 4th April 6-8pm

“Renaissance man or Everyman?  How do we best describe the multi-faceted, helter skelter career of Sam Rabin who spent the whole of his life trying to justify the money his poor immigrant parents invested in his art education?  In turn he became a sculptor, an Olympic athlete, a professional wrestler, a boxer, a film stunt man, a wartime entertainer, a singer of classics for the BBC, a renown teacher of drawing at Goldsmiths’ College, and finally a painter with a unique talent.  All for nothing it would seem as he dies and slips into obscurity.”

An exhibition celebrating an extraordinary life and the publication of a new biography by Art Historian Bill Crow. For information about the author click here. To buy the book click here

Gallery open Thursday to Saturday 12-5pm

We would like to thank the various people who have contributed artworks, objects and items to this exhibition enabling us to bring the Sam Rabin story to you: Jeremy Parratt and his team at Manchester Metropolitan University, Adrian & Maddy at Darnley Fine Art Ltd who have generously leant some really splendid pictures and John Sheeran for the marvellous photographs that help bring Sam Rabin to life.

“….an extraordinary tale of Rabin as a precocious young talent for drawing, a sculptor of international repute, an Olympic athlete, a professional wrestler, a stunt man performing in Alexander Korda’s pre-war history romances, a Forces entertainer in the Second World War, and a singer of light classics who was regularly hired by the BBC for its Friday night music programmes.  As a final flourish of a serially successful performer, Rabin became an acclaimed teacher of drawing at Goldsmiths’ College, revered by his students, some of whom became key figures in the second half of the 20th century in Britain’s art world.

'“I became so intrigued by this apparent multi-talented Renaissance man that I toyed with the idea of telling the Rabin story, in one form or another, firstly via a series of lectures to local art societies, and then researching a full-blown biography.  The preparation of the basic material of Rabin’s life and works appeared to be easy enough.  However, I soon grew dissatisfied with the two-dimensional nature of the resulting product.  It lacked life.  It lacked personality.  More importantly, I concluded that all the mass of detail relating to the various phases of Rabin’s multi-talented career overwhelmed my initial attraction to what made him unique, his boxing pictures. I resolved to concentrate the biography, on what appeared to be the overriding pictorial focus of Rabin’s life - his passion for boxing. It proved to be a subject in which he could make best use of his considerable technical expertise.  To Rabin painting followed drawing.  Rabin was the supreme draughtsman.  The boxing ring with its disciplined space, its colour, and its containment of the ultimate physical confrontation between two human beings, provided the ideal arena for Rabin’s experiments in figurative art.  He could explore the subject at will, just as Cézanne had explored his visions of Mont Sainte Victoire in Southern France, Rembrandt his self-portraits, and Monet his water lilies.” Bill Crow SAM RABIN introduction 2023

Samuel Rabinovitch (later changed to Rabin) was born on 20 June 1903 in Dewhurst Street, Cheetham, Manchester the son of Jacob and Sarah Rabinovitch both recent Russian Jewish exiles from Vitebsk now in the State of Belarus.  Rabinovitch senior was a cap cutter (reputed to have made caps for Rasputin!). His mother a jewellery assembler.  The family moved to Salford, when Rabin was young, where his parents encouraged his talent for drawing and he was accepted into Manchester Art School aged only 11 years old such was his early talent. He also took up boxing in one of the many boys clubs in the city. Drawing and boxing would become the cornerstones of his life. 

Sam Rabin SCULPTOR
”The new Daily Telegraph building was designed by Charles Elcock and opened in 1928.  Even then, only slightly familiar with the good, the bad and the ugly of Art Deco architecture – South London was stuffed full of cinemas with massive columns flanked by Egyptian motifs – it is possible to feel that the popular right wing newspaper’s headquarters was somehow, vulgar.  It was indubitably in poor taste, although Rabin’s contribution was honest and uncompromising.  The faces are stark, primitive visions, fringed by unnecessary Art Deco motifs, perhaps the sculptor’s offering to his patrons’.  The Sunday Times called them “revolutionary works” and commented: “You may like or dislike or even laugh at the two faces, but you can hardly escape their aggressive modernity or symbolism.”  Rabin chose to carve the masks from block to finished work as a medieval mason would have done on a cathedral, on scaffolding above the street.  There are a couple of telling photographs of Rabin relating to this commission.  One shows the sculptor looking as massively strong as his carving of The Past (1929).  He is sporting a knitted tie complete with tie-pin.  It could be a 1950s Hollywood publicity shot for a new heartthrob male lead.  The other features the great Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein who, we are told, was so keen to see Rabin’s works that ‘he broke away from a busy lecturing schedule in London to inspect the heads at close quarters.’  Eisenstein’s companions resemble a group of over-dressed heavy-duty Kremlin bodyguards in their trilbies and massive overcoats, compared with Rabin, relaxed, in a soft jacket.”

Sam Rabin THE AMATEUR
“I have returned from Holland in one piece,” Rabin writes.  What he does not say is, “and I won a medal.”   This is because, as a close friend, Soc., was perfectly aware that Rabin was competing in the 1928 Olympic Games, in Amsterdam, and he would not expect the normally reserved sculptor to brag about his achievement anyway.  Rabin was discretion itself.  Soc. knew that at a certain point Rabin might just say how he got on.  In the modern context, it must be assumed the news would warrant a degree of publicity back in London.  In 1928 however, such things were treated a great deal differently.  Rabin competed in the free-style middle weight wrestling event and won a bronze, being beaten by the Canadian Donald Stockton in the semi-final. “

Sam Rabin THE PROFESSIONAL
Another artist, one-time Vorticist, who metamorphosed as an English Cubist, William Roberts, took it upon himself to see Rabin wrestle with the Black Eagle in 1934.  He produced a picture of that name in his rounder 1930s Cubist style.  Roberts had also been at the Slade School amongst the mighty generation of Gertler, Nash, Spencer and Bomberg, presided over by Henry Tonks and Wilson Steer.  He was heavily influenced by Bomberg’s abstracts in his early years, producing a most complex depiction of the fight between Ted Kid Lewis and Jim Berry in 1914, which is in the Tate.  The New English Art Club’s Futurist correspondent was aghast, “it contains some eight or ten very scrappy angular gesticulatory figures, all quite impossible in their anatomy … the artist has set out to represent the emotion or sensation of combative movement … whether we like the attempt or not .. we get some understanding of the work.”

Much changed between William Roberts’ The Boxers, 1914 and Sam Rabin versus the Black Eagle, in 1934.  Roberts’ style had softened into the more acceptable, without dispensing with his essential adherence to Cubism.  The lighter skinned figure (Sam) is pitching the darker skinned fighter (the Black Eagle) unceremoniously out of the ring much to the consternation of the referee and one of the seconds.  What is also obvious in this picture is that the Tonks’ principles of the importance of drawing and sound structuring of composition continued to underpin William Roberts’ work well into his later years.  This adherence to the Slade’s teaching enabled Roberts and Rabin, more so Rabin, to translate three dimensions into two dimensions, thus forming a recognisable pattern.

Sam Rabin THE ENTERTAINER
”Rabin, did however, manage to find employment as a performer, or rather as a film stunt man.  He was a man of splendid physical presence, handsome with seemingly a natural charm (a letter written in response to one of Paine’s letters in the Manchester archive enquires “is he still good looking?”).  He was also a professional athlete who could be relied upon.  Alexander Korda, the film producer, who made dozens of popular films in the 20s and 30s sought someone who could wrestle with Charles Laughton, the actor, in the latter’s portrayal of King Henry, in The Private Life of Henry VIII which was scheduled to be released in 1933.  It was to be Laughton’s film debut after years as a successful stage actor.  Korda’s intention was, it must be admitted, to be rather unkind to Henry depicting him as a boastful, fat, lecherous glutton.  An image which seems to have stuck with us ever since.  Rabin was to both train Laughton as a passable wrestler, and then to act with him in the film.  In both objectives he did very well.  An initial problem was that he was a bit too strong for Laughton who was thrown about a little excessively, in the opinion of Alexander Korda.  The story goes that Korda then sought a replacement for Rabin.  Laughton, however, had developed a friendship with this odd superman-cum-artist and said, “if he goes, I go,” or something like that.  So, the film sequence went ahead with the braggart Henry intent on demonstrating his wrestling prowess to Merle Oberon, playing Anne Boleyn, at a Royal banquet.  Such wrestling as there was showed Laughton and Rabin getting to grips and then rather cleverly changes into a series of fighting shadows on the walls behind the onlookers.  Laughton swaggers at the end, pinning his opponent down in triumph, before re-joining Anne.  The film was made by Korda’s newly constituted London Films and turned out to be a huge critical and popular success, establishing Korda’s reputation in Britain, as well as being a modest hit in the U.S.A.  The British Film Institute’s ‘Screen line’ is a touch tongue-in-the-cheek saying that ‘it was brilliantly performed (Laughton won an Oscar for his performance) and beautifully designed and endlessly entertaining’ whilst at the same time being determinedly shallow.  As a historical record it is no ‘truer’, than say, Carry on Henry.  There is sadly no place for Rabin in the 1933 published cast. “

Sam Rabin THE SINGER
The Rabinovitches were a musical family.  His brother Joseph was an exceptional violinist, and a composer of some very popular songs.  Rabin continues, “my mother had an extremely fine mezzo soprano voice.  Even as a very young children we were enthralled by the beauty of her voice when she sang …. I grew up surrounded by the music of the records which my father was always buying: records of Caruso, Tito, Chaliapin, Gigli …. I used to spend hours listening to these musical giants … the younger of my sisters used to accompany my brother and, to this day I cannot listen to Mendelssohn’s violin concerto without feeling deeply moved.” (RABIN)

After World War Two, Rabin finally achieved the audition he craved on the 30th May 1946.  He was approved to sing in the BBC Light Programme and was paid five guineas.  After then things took off for Rabin the radio singer.  Further engagements included ‘Music in Your Home’ on Empire Day, and numerous appearances in ‘Friday Night is Music Night’.  In his later conversations he stated “I always loved making broadcasts over the radio and was never nervous of the microphone.”  Unfortunately his BBC career did not last longer than three years.  In March 1949 negative comments were being made.  A Corporation memo was circulated to the Music Department to the effect: “Recommended for another date but please keep him off English ballads.  His type is Russian (operatic or Russian gypsy) or perhaps even more robust Leider.”