When Artists Can’t Go Home, All That’s Left Is Their Art “Self-Portrait” by Chaim Soutine, 1918. Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via Princeton University Art Museum/Art Resource ...

Photo: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebaek, Denmark In 1910, Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), in the shtetl of Smilavičy, in present-day Belarus, asked a fellow villager to pose for a portrait.

Soutine was born in a Jewish village in the Lithuanian part of western Russia (now Belarus). The region was plagued with anti-Semitic violence—thousands of Jews were killed in pogroms during his ...