Popular Artist Paints Rebbes

As a young boy growing up in St. Louis, Robert Tanenbaum spent many hours after school at his grandfather’s kosher butcher shop. David Rumlevitz was a kind, patient “zaydeh” and while he worked as a schochet and butcher, Tanenbaum drew pictures in a small back room.

Anything he saw there, whether it be a broom, a meat slicer or a stack of Jewish newspapers, he drew exactly as he saw them, much to his grandfather’s surprise. At the age of ten, he did a large drawing of Moses and the ten commandments without any lessons or formal training.

His first art classes were given in college at Washington university, school of fine arts, where he won numerous awards for portraiture.

Portraits are his specialty, some of which include a posthumous full length life-size portrait of Howard hughes for Hughes aircraft , three CEOs for UPS and two for Texaco Oil.

For twenty years, he was one of the top illustrators of movie posters when they were all done by hand, which included many movie stars. The Franklin Mint and John Wayne trust hired him to do a collectable plate series of 24 portraits of Wayne which sold over a million copies.

As his reputation grew, so did the breadth of his work. He covered advertising assignments with 32 paintings for Levi’s corporation ads, 35 paintings for AT&T, 33 national ad campaigns for the NFL and the collectible market, 150 portraits for the NBA, MLB, NFL, Nascar and horse racing, ranging from Michael Jordan to Mickey Mantle, Tiger Woods, and many others.

Tanenbaum always had a dream, from a young age, to create Jewish art, and now his dream has become a reality. Working with his partner, Yaakov Shallman, Tanenbaum has started to create beautiful oil paintings of the Rebbes, chassidim, tzaddikim, and Jewish scenes unmatched in their richness, true to life likenesses and warmth.

“This project has been a wonderful way to connect to my Jewish heritage and utilize my g-d given talent to paint Jewish subjects,” said Tanenbaum.

While the original oil paintings are not for sale just yet, their new enterprise called Canvas 26 is selling canvas giclee prints of his Jewish paintings to the public. They are available exclusively online right now at canvas26.com or at https://www.Facebook.Com/canvas26
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