Ruth Amid the Alien Corn [Ruth and Boaz]. Early 1850s. Graphite and watercolour on paper. 12 x 7 inches (17.8 x 30.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of the author.
The story of Ruth and Boaz comes from the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. During a period of famine an Israelite family from Bethlehem, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion emigrated to the nearby country of Moab. Elimelech died and the sons married two Moabite women. Mahlon married Ruth while Chilion married Orpah. After about ten years Naomi's two sons also died and Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem. Naomi tells her daughter-in-laws to return to their mothers and remarry and Orpath reluctantly leaves. Ruth, however, responds, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me" (Ruth 1, 16-17). Ruth and Naomi therefore returned to Bethlehem at the beginning of the harvest in order to seek a better life. In order to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth went to the fields to glean and the field she went to belonged to a wealthy landowner named Boaz. He was kind to her because he had heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth told Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and she gleaned in his field throughout the remainder of barley and wheat harvest. The relative closest to Naomi's late husband was obliged by Leviate law to marry Mahlon's widow in order to carry on his family's inheritance. This relative however relinquished his claim, and Ruth and Boaz (the next closest relative) were able to marry. They have a son, Obed, who becomes the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David. In Dyce's watercolour Ruth can be seen bending over and gleaning while Boaz is standing nearby and conversing with a man who was likely the overseer of his workers. A man loading sheafs of grain can be seen sitting perched on an oxen-driven cart to the left of the standing group of Boaz and the two other male figures. Additional farm labourers can be seen in the right midground while a village sits perched on a hill in the background to the right.
William Dyce was a deeply religious man whose personal motto was: "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy steps" (qtd. in Melville 38). He was a High Church Anglican and a follower of the Tractarian Movement. As a friend of John Henry Newman, he had at one time had considered joining him and converting to Catholicism. But he remained in the Anglican fold, and, as Jennifer Melville has noted, wanted to justify his adoption of religious subjects "in an Anglican, not a Catholic context" (39). Dyce became one of the most important religious painters of the Victorian age along with William Holman Hunt, exhibiting religious pictures both prior to, and after, the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.
In 1850 Dyce exhibited at the Royal Academy The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, a work that is close in subject matter to the pastoral watercolour of Ruth Amid the Alien Corn, and a work that is probably close to it in date. There may be a personal interest here. On 17 January 1850, he had married Jane Brand, who was barely nineteen years old at a time when he himself was in his mid-forties. Subjects like Jacob and Rachel or Ruth and Boaz would have had a special appeal for him since they feature young women marrying much older men.
As we see elsewhere, later in his career Dyce turned to New Testament subjects which were unusual in that they are painted with a Pre-Raphaelite concern for detail but exhibit the features of the Scottish highlands rather than the quasi-Middle Eastern landscapes of his earlier works. Such works were likely intended to suggest the contemporary presence of Jesus in the lives of everyday British people. Dyce was fond of using typological symbolism in his work and he may have chosen the subject of Ruth and Boaz as a form of biblical typology where Boaz represents Jesus, Naomi represents Israel, and Ruth represents the Gentiles. Boaz's descendants lead to David and ultimately to Jesus.
The subject of Ruth and Boaz has been a popular one with artists since the time of the Renaissance. It was much favoured by the Nazarenes. Members of this group who chose to portray the subject included Johann Friedrich Overbeck in a drawing of 1818 (Museum Benhaus, Lübeck, Germany); Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in his painting, Ruth in Boaz's Field; and Eduard Carl Friedrich Holbein in a painting of 1830. Contemporary British artists of the Pre-Raphaelite circle who painted the subject included G. F. Watts, in an oil painting of c.1835-36; D. G. Rossetti, with his watercolour of 1855; Simeon Solomon, with his watercolour of 1862 and at least two illustrations from the same time (Ruth and Naomi and "Naomi and the Child Obed); Walter Crane, with his oil painting, Ruth and Boaz of 1863; David Wilkie Wynfield, with his oil painting of Ruth and Boaz in 1879, and Thomas Matthews Rooke, with an oil painting of 1876-77. William Blake Richmond painted an early watercolour of c.1860 of Ruth in the Field of Boaz. Evelyn De Morgan's painting of Ruth and Naomi dates to 1887. One of the best-known Victorian versions of Ruth and Naomi is Philip Calderon's oil painting of 1886.
Bibliography
Melville, Jennifer. "Faith, Fact, Family and Friends in the Art of William Dyce." William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, 38-45.
Pointon, Marcia: William Dyce 1806-1864, A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Sweetman, Steve. "Ruth – Typology." About Jesus. Web. 22 December 2024. https://www.stevesweetman.com/Ruth/ruth5.htm
Created 22 December 2024