Jacob Kramer was born at Klincy in the Ukraine in 1892. His parents were both highly talented individuals. His father, Max studied under the great Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930) at the St Petersburg Fine Art Academy and became a court painter; his mother, Cecilia, was an opera singer and an authority on Russian folk songs . In 1900 the Kramer family emigrated to England and settled in Leeds, where Max was forced to find work as a retoucher and hand-colourer of photographs. Four further children were born to the Kramers, the oldest of which, Sarah, later married the artist William Roberts. In an interview in the Yorkshire Evening News on 29 June 1928, Kramer said: ‘I came to Leeds from Russia in 1900, when I was eight or nine years old, I earned my first shilling after I had run away from my elementary school, the Darley Street Council School. I was at the Leeds Midland Railway Station when I saw a commercial traveller with some parcels of hats. I was rather strong and big for my age and offered – for the fun of the thing – to carry them for him. I took them for him to a place somewhere behind the General Post Office, and he rewarded me with a shilling. My parents were rather strict and would not have approved of the escapade. I spent the shilling at a music-hall. The music-halls, with their colour and rhythm, always attracted me.’ Kramer repeatedly ran away from home. ‘At the Darley Street School my draughtsmanship had been thought rather well of and I had received much encouragement from one of the teachers, a Miss Poyser. In the belief, then, that I had some little talent, I now put in my evenings at classes at the Leeds School of Art, where Mr Parsons, now Art Master at the Bradford Boys’ Grammar School, suggested I should go in for a Junior Art Scholarship. I promised to try for it, never for one moment expecting to win it. I did win it, however, and stayed for two years at the School of Art, having won another scholarship in the meantime. I must admit that I didn’t conform altogether to the routine of the School, but my dear late headmaster, Mr Haywood Rider, who was really rather proud of me, was very tolerant. This did not prevent him from threatening me many times with expulsion. After a time, I was again troubled with restlessness and ran away again. It was then that I did my first real work. The late Weedon Grossmith was at the Leeds Grand Theatre at the time, and I did a portrait of him behind the stage. Grossmith’s manager invited me to London, and I decided to accept the invitation. One of the first things I did when I got there, was to seek out Mr George Clausen, RA, whose work I much admired, and he kindly showed me his work and round his studio. That was my first experience of meeting a real artist, and it was a happy one. Whilst in London I did sketches of Sir Gerald du Maurier, and of Augustus van Beine, the cellist, who died suddenly on the stage at Blackpool a week later. The first ‘big’ money I earned was when I sold a small Reynolds portrait of William Hazlitt, which I had found in Hunslet of all places, to a wealthy student, for £4, and with the proceeds I bought a huge canvas on which I painted one of my best and one of my first big pictures. This picture was sent to the New English Art Club, where it attracted the attention and interest of Ambrose McEvoy, RA, who became my teacher. He came round and told me that the picture had created a furore and that Augustus John was furious at the suggestion made by some adverse critics on the committee that it should be rejected. In defiance of them, John had placed it upon a screen by itself. Before that, I had become a student at the Slade School, a step which I might not have taken but for Sir Michael Sadler’s interest in me. I held my first exhibition in Bradford in 1915.’ Kramer attended the Slade from 1913 to 1914, financed by the Jewish Educational Aid Society. Although a cartoon by him was included in the war number of Wyndham Lewis’s Blast and he was courted by the Vorticists, Kramer remained aesthetically independent. His work drew heavily upon his racial and religious background and his remarkable Day of Atonement (1920; above) may be found in Leeds City Art Gallery. Returning to Leeds, he became a celebrity, but lived in grinding poverty and battled alcoholism, while producing poor quality portraits of local figures. Kramer is reported in the Yorksire Observer in 1935 as saying: ‘London is not really the place for creative artists. I prefer anywhere in the provinces. There is too much excitement in London, too much distraction, not sufficient isolation. It is a hysterical place. there are too many cliques and coteries and groups. I don’t think there is any artist who has done really great work in London. They have always had to go away to do it. It is a nerve-wracking place. These new revolutions in art are nearly all due to the hectic rivalry of the coteries.’ Kramer died in 1962. His friend Jacob Epstein made a bust of him, copies of which can be found in the Tate in London and at Leeds City Art Gallery. The Tate, the V&A and the British Museum all hold examples of Kramer’s work, but the most extensive collections may be found at the Leeds City Art Gallery and Leeds University Art Gallery. In the period 1968 to 1993, Leeds College of Art was known as  Jacob Kramer College.