Eshkol Collection
Alexei Nikolsky
1889 - 1975
Alexei Nikolsky was of Russian extraction and his family fled from Russia on the Communist takeover in 1918. Their choice of exile was Poland, from where they were forced to flee again when the Nazis invaded in 1939. Alexei Nikolsky came to England via France as part of the Kindertransport, and He was put to work in agriculture. This is how Nikolsky found himself living in Northney, an agrarian area of Hayling Island, where he stayed until his death in 1975.
A musician as well as an artist, Nikolsky chose painting because he found it easier to earn money that way. As his reputation grew, local traders and businesses grew used to bartering their services with Nikolsky, and as he was prolific in his output, several collections were built up this way. After the death of his wife, he seemed inconsolable and lost the ability to paint.
Flower Composition 1969. Oil on Canvas
Historical Context
Kinder-transport 1939
During 1938–1939, in a program known as the Kinder-transport, the United Kingdom admitted 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children on an emergency basis.
1939 also marked the first time the United States filled its combined German-Austrian quota (which now included annexed Czechoslovakia). However, this limit did not come close to meeting the demand; by the end of June 1939 309,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had applied for the 27,000 places available under the quota.
By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jewish people had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to the Mandate of Palestine, 40,000 to Great Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China.
At the end of 1939, about 202,000 Jews people remained in Germany and 57,000 in annexed Austria, many of them elderly. By October 1941, when Jewish emigration was officially forbidden, the number of Jews in Germany had declined to 163,000. The vast majority of those Jews still in Germany were murdered in camps and ghettos during the Holocaust.