Nela Rubinstein(1908-2001)
Teddy Bears on a Chair(1968) signed.dat.p.d. Nela 1968
watercolor, gouache, pencil, paper, 23x32,3 cm
on the reverse a sticker from the framing workshop at 8004 Roosevelt Avenue, Queens, N.Y.
Nela Rubinstein (Arthur's wife) painted many such pictures for her grandchildren as an aid to storytelling. Both of the teddy bears portrayed survive to this day and are housed with her daughter Eva Rubinstein in New York. The smaller one, named Dudulek, belonged to little Nela, while the larger one, Magorica, belonged to her sister Ania, two years older, who died tragically - at the age of 4 she drowned in a laundry cooking vat. Her teddy bear was hidden in a drawer and after some time her mother gave it to Neli. The latter, in turn, did not part with them throughout her life, and as Eva Rubinstein recalls, "both teddy bears were in her mother's only suitcase, which she was allowed to take on the ship when we fled France for America in 1939. Both teddy bears once performed at a big teddy bear exhibition in Chicago .... I have a photo of my mother taken in Paris with the teddy bears on her lap, sometime in the 1990s ...".
