Samuel Rabinovitch was born in Manchester to an impoverished Russian Jewish family in 1903. In 1914 at the age of eleven, he improved his opportunity by winning a scholarship to the Manchester School of Art, their youngest ever entrant. There, he studied under the gentle Frenchman Adolphe Valette, who taught his students by demonstration, a technique Rabin would later adopt in his own teaching career. Rabin’s contemporaries at Manchester included L S Lowry and James Fitton. He entered the Slade in 1921, where he studied under that redoubtable martinet of line and form, Professor Henry Tonks. Rabin roomed with fellow-student John Mansbridge above a laundry in the Tottenham Court Road. In time, Rabin grew into a large figure of a man, of considerable strength. He was a natural sportsman and excelled both as a boxer and wrestler. He funded his art education from his wrestling career. Mansbridge introduced Rabin to Clive Gardiner, who would play an important role in his career later on. After the Slade, Rabin moved to Paris, where he studied the works of Daumier, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. In Paris, he came under the influence of the French sculptor Charles Despiau (1874-1946). Rabin represented Great Britain in the 1928 Summer Olympics in the Netherlands, winning a bronze medal in the Freestyle Wrestling. That same year, he was selected by that Medici of the 20th century, Frank Pick of the London Underground, to execute his first large-scale commission, a relief of the West Wind for architect Charles Holden’s London Underground Headquarters Building at Broadway, St James Park. There, he worked alongside Eric Gill, Henry Moore, Eric Aumonier and Jacob Epstein. Their influence brought Rabin to the forefront of the direct carving movement. In 1929 he produced the masks of Past and Future for the Daily Telegraph Building at the Lugate Hill end of Fleet Street. After that, he changed his name to Rabin, gave up sculpture and embarked on a full-time career as a professional wrestler and film actor. He played the part of the Champion Wrestler, alongside Charles Laughton in Alexander Korda’s film The Private Life of King Henry VIII (1933). Rabin was a good friend of the painter William Roberts, who would often attend all-in wrestling matches in his company. Rabin would feature in Roberts’ painting Sam Rabin Versus Black Eagle (1934). During the Second World War, Rabin sang with the Army Classical Music Group led by the composer Edmund Rubbra, who played piano, with William Pleeth (cello) and Joshua Glazier (violin). They travelled all over England, Scotland and thence to Germany, with their own grand piano, which with its legs removed for transport, became a seat for them in the back of their army lorry. Rabin’s fine baritone voice was frequently heard on music radio programmes of the period. In 1949 he was appointed Teacher of Drawing by Clive Gardiner at Goldsmiths’ College of Art, New Cross, in south London and embarked on what were probably the most fulfilling and happy years of his long life. The etcher and teacher Paul Drury would write: ‘John Mansbridge first introduced me to his old Slade companion. Sam’s quiet diffidence belied his burly and commanding bearing. He was a rather private man, but very courteous and approachable, so before long we became real friends. Sam and I from our first meeting shared the bond of music. He had an exceptionally fine, resonant voice; though a shy perfectionist, he was pressed to take part in our revels, being The Pirate King in Pleasure Island and bringing the house down with My Curly Headed Baby in The Bombshells.’ In the second phase of his artistic career, Rabin concentrated principally on producing depictions of the action in the boxing ring, usually executed in coloured crayon. He had an exhibition of paintings at the Leicester Galleries in 1960. The Burlington Magazine noted in its review: ‘Sam Rabin is primarily concerned with the boxing wrestling ring. Though his paintings are small, he creates imposing compositions by means of powerful figures simplified to squat forceful shapes. Angled viewpoints and the strong parallel lines are used to great effect. Rabin’s constant variation on the same theme, his use of interlocking planes and his effective viewpoints are similar to what Degas did with the ballet dancer.’ At Goldsmiths’ he numbered among his pupils Bridget Riley and Michael Williams. His critical sketches in the corners of his pupils’ work would be treasured by generations of students. To the consternation of both his students and colleagues, Sam Rabin’s time at Goldsmiths’ ended in great unhappiness, as the ‘new brooms’ of the art world determined that drawing instruction was irrelevant to the new Abstract agenda. He (and those like him) were quietly, but effectively, sidelined. Rabin put up with the indifference of his new masters until 1965, when he transferred to the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art. He continued to teach art until 1983, way beyond the normal retirement age and passed away on 20 December 1991.