EDUARD HOLBEIN | RUTH AND BOAZ

Adolf Stern, Berlin

Dr. Harry David Salinger, Los Angeles, California

Irene Saltern, Newport Beach, California (by descent from the above)

Thence by descent (and sold, Bonhams, New York, November 2, 2016, lot 43, illustrated) 

Berlin, Akademische Austellungen, 1830, no. 278

Helmut Börsch-Supan, Die Kataloge der Berliner Akademie-Austellungen 1786-1850, 1971, vol. 2, p. 26.

The subject of the present lot comes from the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. Ruth, a widowed Moabite, has relocated to Bethlehem, where she works in the fields of a wealthy landowner named Boaz. Boaz, the central figure, has noticed Ruth and instructed his workers to leave extra grain in the fields for the gleaners to collect, directly benefiting the livelihood of the heroine. The two later married and became the grandparents of King David.

Ruth and Boaz was painted in 1830 and exhibited the same year in the Akademische Austellungen in Berlin. At the time, Holbein was the pupil of the painter Carl Begas, who had studied in Rome between 1822 and 1824, where he likely encountered the Nazarene movement. The Nazarenes were defined by their rejection of Neoclassicism; the influence of Medieval and early Renaissance painting, particularly that of Raphael; and an interest in combining Northern European, and Gothic spirituality with an Italian Renaissance-inspired style of painting. Through his association with Begas, Holbein must have learned about the Nazarene style of painting. The story of Ruth and Boaz had been a popular subject among members of the movement during the previous decade.