Jean Jacoby

Luxembourger Jean Jacoby studied at the École des Beaux-Arts at Strasbourg in Alsace and became an art teacher (1912-18), then a church painter at Wiesbaden, before he returned to Strasbourg, taking over the management of a printing company. From 1926-34 Jacoby worked as an illustrator for newspapers and the Ullstein Publishing House. In 1934 he returned to Alsace and lived in Mulhouse. He died of a heart attack in 1936.

Jacoby often depicted sports in his works and designed postage stamps for Luxembourg. These stamps commemorated the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki and the 1952 World Cycling Championships. The 1984 Olympic Games edition was posthumous, also based on his works. Earning two gold medals for his works Three Sports Studies (1924) and Rugby (1928), as well as two Honorable Mentions (1932 and 1936), he became the most successful Olympic artist ever. He is also considered one of the most prolific Olympic artists. His second wife Maria Jacoby also took part in the 1936 Olympic Games’ art competitions in painting, applied arts (out of competition).

Jacoby received the gold medal in painting for three studies, Corner Ball, Start and Rugby, in 1924. Two of them, painted in oil on wood in the same year, are now in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne: Corner (104 x 67 cm) and Rugby (99 x 59.5 cm). Four years later, a charcoal drawing with the theme Rugby earned him the gold medal in the Drawings and Water Colors section. Of his five entries in Amsterdam, Water-Polo and Le Match de Championnat de Football were paintings. Saut en longueur, like Rugby, was a charcoal drawing that was also printed as a lithograph (size 65 x 48 cm). The model was the French track and field athlete and Olympian Robert Paul. For the drawing Tennis and the watercolor Boxing there are various options in his oeuvre, but due to partial lack of temporal classification they cannot be clearly assigned.

In 1932 Jacoby participated with four oil paintings and drawings or graphics each. The paintings could be clearly identified: The Last 20 m (1932, oil on wood, 112 x 87 cm), Ice Hockey (1932, oil on canvas, 114 x 90 cm), Football in Winter (also known as Football in the Snow, oil on canvas, 77 x 65 cm) and Water Polo (aka Before the goal - Water Polo, 1932, oil on canvas, 59 x 48.5 cm). The latter is also in the inventory of the Lausanne Olympic Museum. Of the drawings, only one could be clearly traced. (In front of the goal -) field hockey is a charcoal drawing measuring 100 x 80 cm; this is not entirely certain for 110 m hurdles, possibly identical to Course de haies (Hurdle race, charcoal mixed media, 75 x 105 cm).

Some assistance in identifying Jacoby’s paintings for the 1936 art competitions is provided by photographs of Luxembourg’s section of the exhibition. The three large-scale works Start, Kampf and Ziel, a triptych of a hurdle race, were planned as murals for a clubhouse. Kampf normally appeared under the title Le passage des haies (Over the hurdles). All works were painted in oil on wood. The format was 152 x 206 cm for the outer paintings and 152 x 250 cm for the center one. Lithographs based on charcoal drawings made up the majority of Jacoby’s works for the art competitions in Berlin, including Rugby (1936, 60 x 80 cm), Football (1935, 82 x 112 cm), Road Racers (aka Cyclisme, 1936, 72 x 92 cm), Boxing (1936, 75 x 92 cm), and Discus Thrower (76 x 54 cm). The same technique was used to create Le skieur (1936, 100 x 90 cm, LIthography 88 x 67.5 cm). The Football scene was a 102 x 80 cm lithograph from 1935, but the correlation with Football (Corner) is uncertain. Cutouts from Water polo were apparently used for posters. Jacoby regularly worked on the topic Ice Hockey, for example in the charcoal drawing (100 x 80 cm) for the art competitions in 1936, which was reproduced as a lithograph in the format 75 x 92 cm. In 1952, the motif was included in the stamps of Luxembourg for the Olympic Games in Helsinki, as well as the Road Racers. Probably the original charcoal drawings of all these works were exhibited in 1936. A Series of Etchings on the 8th Chant of the Odyssey showed five Greek sports scenes: The Runner Klytoneos, The Long Jumper Amphialos, The Wrestler Euryalos, The Discus Thrower Elatreus and The Fist Fighter Laodamas. They were also produced as lithographs after charcoal drawings. All sheets were 52 x 41 cm and were created in 1936. As a tribute “To the Olympic Games of Greece” they were sold collected in a portfolio.