Clara Esther Klinghoffer was a British artist, notable for her paintings and drawings.

Klinghoffer was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Szczerzec, located about 20 km to the southwest of what was once Lwów, Ukraine, but at the time of her birth was known as Lemberg, then part of Austria-Hungary. She was brought to England as a baby in 1903.

The family lived in Manchester before settling in the East End of London. When Klinghoffer showed a talent for drawing at 14, her parents were determined that she should have an opportunity to pursue it. Though poor, family funds were made available for art materials and for her to briefly attend the Sir John Cass College of Art in Aldgate. At 15, carrying a portfolio nearly as large as she, Clara visited London’s Central School of Arts & Crafts where, upon seeing her work,

Bernard Meninsky commented, "Good Lord, that child draws like da Vinci.”

Invited to attend the Slade – but with the counsel that the teachers there would not be able to teach her anything more – she stayed for two years and won the admiration of Alfred Wolmark. He, and mentors such as Jacob Epstein and Meninsky, recommended her to the Hampstead Gallery which featured her work in 1919. 

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Klinghoffer had her first one-woman exhibition of sixty works in London during 1919, when she was 19. The critics hailed her as "Masterly” - "…a dazzling radiance that has no equal at present in Pall Mall.” - "A revelation. That is the point of Clara Klinghoffer’s genius.” - "Her work shows the influence of Rembrandt and Hals.” - and the Daily Graphic hailed her debut with the headline, "Girl Who Draws Like Raphael – Success At 19". The review opened with: "Miss Clara Klinghoffer must be regarded as a new star. Her work is strongly individualistic and original, her point of view strictly her own, her power great. If she elects to do a thing it is done with masterful force.” Her many press clippings and Reviews and the Museum collections worldwide which purchased her artwork, including the Tate Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, document Clara's fame through the next ten years in England and Europe.

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In 1932, the English publication Women of Today wrote:

A woman who became a famous painter overnight at the age of 19, Miss Klinghoffer is holding her first one-man show for six years at the Redfern Gallery today. Now universally recognized as one of the greatest English woman painters, she was a poor and utterly unknown young girl from the East End when her first exhibition took the artistic world by storm in 1919. Hailed everywhere as the girl who could draw like Raphael, her superb technique has always been compared with the Old Masters, but at the time of her first show she had never seen any of the great Old Masters pictures.

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In 1926, she married Dutch journalist and author Joseph ("Joop") Willem Ferdinand Stoppelman at that Duke Street Great Synagogue of London. In 1929 they moved to Holland with their daughter, Sonia. Clara's son, Michael, was born in Amsterdam. Despite a difficult husband's jealousy of her fame and family, and the rising Nazi threat, she managed to combine raising a family with a career that garnered acclaim throughout Europe

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In 1939, discovering Nazi spies had been planted amongst the household staff and aware that the invasion of Holland was imminent, the family returned to London briefly before departing for the United States. Before leaving Holland, their household furniture and some of her artwork were placed in storage in a Haarlem warehouse and subsequently stolen by the Nazis.

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In 1945, following the war, Klinghoffer divided her time between her studios in London and New York. Although she had exhibited in the United States during the forties, fifties and sixties, she refused to join the abstract expressionism which had become so popular in America and her prominence was overshadowed by what she referred to as the splatter and drip approach to art.