Between Two Worlds: The Life and Art of Ursula Sternberg

As a child, Ursula Hertz was exposed to the best and worst of 1930s Germany, all of which shaped her future. Surrounded by music and art at home, she found inspiration. Driven from that home by the Nazi regime, she poured herself into carefully observed sketches and found solace.

She began drawing at six, and the practice intensified when, at 11, she fled with her family. The Hertzes spent much of World War II in Holland and then Belgium, where Ursula was separated from the family for a time, sent into hiding because her father feared she looked “too Jewish.” Alone and in hiding, she turned to art.

Finding refuge in art

Rather than reflecting darkness and isolation, most of Sternberg’s art exudes joy, such as she felt at war’s end, moving to London and pursuing commercial art and textile design. Her delicate patterns transformed the drab postwar world into a happy kingdom of elegant soldiers on prancing horses, abundant bunches of cherries and strawberries, lush bundles of roses, and top hats and parasols waiting for their stylish owners.

“The life of an artist is a life of conviction, intention, total engagement with the work,” she said, “totally thrown into the place where time ceases, the material becomes immaterial. Erased, actually.” Though Sternberg’s art revealed little hardship, it was a defiant response to what she had experienced.

Visual diaries

She began keeping a journal in the 1940s. In it, as well as in everything she produced, Sternberg often mingled words and images — illustrating letters and inscribing canvases with thoughts and snatches of poems, providing insight into the creative moment.

Never without a sketchbook, she recorded scenes as she waited for trains, sat in cafés, and traveled the world. Later, she’d add color and sometimes text, transforming them into what she called visual diaries. Paging through them, Seyler writes, Sternberg could return instantly to long-ago places and feelings — a rich text format of her own invention.

Finding her niche

Ursula met American conductor Jonathan Sternberg in Brussels after the war, and the couple soon married — and Ursula began moving into fine art. Exhibitions followed, and her work began to be collected. The Sternbergs and their two children eventually settled in Elkins Park in 1971, but Ursula was happier in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood, where they relocated in 1989, because it reminded her of the walkable sociability of European villages.

She found inspiration in the neighborhood, visiting Pastorius Park and sketching at Woodmere Art Museum, and in Center City, observing the crowds at the Reading Terminal. Now 95, Jonathan Sternberg still resides in the Chestnut Hill home in which his wife’s artistry flows from canvases to walls to furnishings. Roses trail across the purple bathroom floor and up the side of a white, claw-foot bathtub, and corners are artfully arranged with plants, decorated boxes, and objects gathered over a lifetime. Ursula’s hand is everywhere.

The sunny living room is where Sternberg hosted three-hour drawing sessions every Wednesday that featured live, usually nude, models. Seyler joined the salons, which were so popular that they continued a decade after Sternberg died, in the last year of Sternberg’s life. She recalls:

…a half-dozen or so artists would passionately chat while drawing…

Heated discussions about politics, religion, philosophy, cultural events or personal struggles, and just plain juicy gossip would occupy left brains so that right brains could run free. And run free they did, with Ursula’s charismatic lead. The room was rarely quiet.

Ursula would find and provide the models, usually female…At times she approached complete strangers if they seemed to have ‘potential,’ i.e. a strong feature, eccentric clothes. Never did this random method lead to any trouble as fainter hearts might have feared. Ursula’s strong will left no room for drama.

Sternberg’s work is held in private collections throughout the United States and Europe, and in public, educational, and corporate collections that include the Victoria and Albert Museum, Woodmere Art Museum, Duke University, and New York Public Library.