The Alter Rebbe

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the Alter Rebbe, founder of Chabad Chassidus and author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, is painted here at the moment the eyes lift. The gaze rises past the viewer, pale blue and steady, set beneath a brow worked in cool greens and soft yellows. A dark kippah holds the top of the canvas, the one still mass in a field of movement. Around it the ground breaks into ribbons of blue, white, crimson and yellow green, radiating outward as if the air itself had caught the thought.

The beard carries the painting. It falls the full height of the canvas in ridges of knifed white, threaded with lavender, rose and pale yellow, each stroke laid wet and left unblended. The face emerges from the same current, green shadow against warm light, caught in thought rather than arranged for a sitting. Teeger works in oil with the palette knife alone, and the surface keeps the pressure of the hand that made it. Painted in Johannesburg in 2026, the work now lives in a private collection.