Alfred Dehodencq

Albert Noé (by 1910)
Private Collection, France (acquired in 1965 or 1966 until at least 2010)

Paris, Salon des Artistes Français, 1867, no. 448

Gabriel Seailles, Alfred Dehodencq, Paris, 1910, p. 197, no. 155
John Denison Champlin, Jr., ed., Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, New York, vol. I, 1913, p. 384 

Lined. Stable finely patterned craquelure is visible in the sky and faintly in areas of the foreground and figures. Under UV: Lines, dots, and dashes of inpainting to address craquelure are visible in the sky, concentrated at center right, and in the left figure's costume. A few larger spots of inpainting are visible in the sky at upper left. There is a 24 inch horizontal line of inpainting that extends in the bottom of the left and center figures' costumes. On the left figure there is a 2 inch horizontal line and two smaller areas of inpainting visible on her hands and cloak as well as inpainting to address the stretcher bar mark. Smaller areas of inpainting visible on the central figure's neckline and cloak and surrounding the right figure's profile and cheek.
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An Orientalist painter born a generation after Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, but much influenced by their “romantic” depictions of North Africa, Alfred Dehodencq initially studied with Léon Coignet, painting religious and history subjects in his early career.

Following the revolution in France in 1848, where he sustained an injured arm, he traveled to the Pyrenees and then Madrid in 1849, where he was much inspired by the bravura work of both Diego Vélazquez and Francisco Goya. He would remain in Spain, settling in the southwest port city of Cadiz and made his first trip to nearby Morocco in 1853. The journey was a revelation and would inform his work for the rest of his life. He was struck by the strength and clarity of the North African light, and visited, in addition to Tangiers and Tétouan in the north, Mogador, Rabat and Salé.

In Dehodencq’s Ruth and Naomi, he presents the narrative between Naomi of Bethlehem and her two Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. After the three women became widowed, Naomi determined that her daughters-in-law should return to the homes of their mothers. Orpah departed, but the steadfast Ruth refused to forsake her mother-in-law. Naomi prodded: “Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee... for whether thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth: 1:15-16).