One can only admire the energy and learning of Jerzy Malinowski, an authority on Polish art and Polish Jewish culture, whose beautifully produced work on the painting and sculpture of Polish Jews is over 400 two-column pages long and includes 554 illustrations, many of them in colour (although they are small). Among the men (and a few women) he discusses are many unknown or virtually unknown artists, while relatively few are well-known figures such as Mark Antokolsky, Maurycy Gottlieb, Samuel Hirszenberg, and Ephraim Moses Lilien.

Malinowski begins his story in the mid-nineteenth century with the appearance of the first Polish artists of Jewish origin, of whom Aleksander Lesser (born in 1814) was the most prominent. This was an easy decision, but other decisions made by the author are more difficult and more problematic. What exactly does he mean by Polish Jewish artists? Obviously, those artists born and active in the Kingdom of Poland and in Galicia qualify, but it is difficult to justify the inclusion of Mark Antokolsky (here spelled Marek Antokolski), the important sculptor born in Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius) and universally regarded as a Russian Jew. Malinowski admits that Antokolsky's cultural orientation was Russian, as is clearly expressed in his choice of subject matter. So why is he, along with other artists from the Russian Pale of Settlement, such as Yehudah Pen and Mordecai Zvi Mane, included in this volume? This tendency towards ‘Polish imperialism’ may also be noted in the author's decision to reproduce and discuss the work of Lesser Ury, surely a German Jewish artist, since he was born in the Poznan´ region, then part of Prussia. On the other hand, another outstanding artist of Jewish origin from a region once Polish, Isaac Levitan, is not discussed at all, and neither is Chagall, Pen's pupil in Vitebsk.

More significant is the question of what Malinowski means by ‘Jewish artists’ and ‘Jewish art’.