Ephraim Doner

There is a discrepancy re: Ephraim's date of birth - his tombstone reads 1905, while the SS Death Index reads 1906.

Froim Lejb Duner, from Serock, Poland, arrived in the USA on Nov 3, 1923 on the Belgenland, which departed from Antwerp. Manifest Line Number 0006. (Passenger Records from Ellis Island)

Ephraim was a painter in the Carmel Highlands, California. He was a well loved, colorful character, ensconced in the local art and literary scene. One story has it that when his old car finally refused to budge, Joan Baez appeared shortly after, to deliver a new car, suitably wrapped in a large bow.

My mother used to tell the story she heard as a child in Poland, that Ephraim had gone to America and had become a "painter to the White House". (Rena Lis-Horwitz)

Big Sur has a motto, coined some years ago when local artist Ephraim Doner stood at a public meeting and proclaimed, "Big Sur is where you go to launder your karma."

On the Art of Ephraim Doner

by Clark Ashton Smith

Ephraim Doner's art is revealed through a magic mirror, a mirror deeply installed in his brain, behind the very roots of physical sight. It reflects the universal and eternal, rather than the localism and temporality seen by superficial artists.

This current display, in the gallery of the Owings house at Highlands, contains capital examples of his portraits, groups, landscapes, and tiles. Among the portraits, I would single out, perhaps arbitrarily, the ones of Mrs. Owings, Mrs. Roberts, Eric Barker, and the self-portrait. Those of women are marked by highly pleasing harmonies of color; all, by subtle characterization.

There are several pictures of crowds, deep-colored, mysterious, and surging with enigmatic activity, with the vital unrest of eternal generations.

The landscapes, too, seem to swell and surge with never-ceasing growth

The tiles are unique. They depict the men, women, beasts and birds of new and as yet unnarrated fables. Here, in this small, hard medium, one finds sheer perfection.

HENRY MILLER in Big Sur

Henry Miller (1891-1980) is, in the words of one of his biographers, "one of the most famous-and infamous-writers of the twentieth century." During the eighteen years he spent living in Big Sur, he turned out some of his finest work, including The Rosy Crucifixion, a three-volume epic about his life with his second wife, June; and Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, the story of his life in the region.

Miller fell in love with the rugged, isolated region on his first visit in 1944, and decided to move there almost immediately. Upon his arrival in Big Sur, Miller wrote, "Here I will find peace. Here I shall find the strength to do the work I was made to do." He also became part of a literary and artistic community that included Emil White, Jaime de Angulo, Lillian Bos Ross and her husband Harrydick, Ephraim Doner, and others.

The HENRY MILLER LIBRARY serves three main groups of visitors: local residents both from Monterey County and Big Sur [40%], California residents [30%], and foreign tourists especially from Japan, France and Germany, where Miller is more well-known than he is in the U.S. [30%].

Big Sur enjoys a worldwide artistic and literary reputation almost as great as its reputation for breathtaking natural beauty. Many visitors from all over the world are drawn to Big Sur because of Henry Miller, and the library staff directs these tourists to Miller's work, the Library's permanent collection of his art work and rare editions of his writing, as well as videos featuring the author and his literary and artistic companions. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction and artwork by contemporaries of Miller and many of the works influenced by him also grace the Library's shelves walls and grounds, including the tiles of EPHRAIM DONER.

Quote from an interview with JONATHAN WILLIAMS by Jeffrey Beam

My old friend, Ephraim Doner (whose father had been an Hassidic rabbi in Poland), once told me about "The Lamed-Vov." In the ancient Hebraic tradition the Lamed-Vov were the 36 great souls of the earth. Wonderfully, they never knew they were great souls, but Yahweh knew. If they dwindled to fewer than 36, then Yahweh would pull the plug and go to work on a better animal.

from "Odyssey of a Liberal" by FREDA UTLEY

When I moved to New York Hans arranged for me to become a “lodger” in the 50 dollar a month apartment on Waverly Place in the Village which Dora Shuser, who was to become the closest of all my friends, shared with her sister Rosa and Rosa’s husband Ephraim Doner. I occupied their tiny, spare room in which there was barely space to install my bed and the small desk I bought. This was no hardship since I became a member of the family and we lived an amiable communal life undreamed of in Moscow where, in a similar small living space, there would have been continual bickering and quarrels and arguments about who owed who a few kopeks for gas or electricity.