Ruth and Boaz, by David Wilkie Wynfield (1837-1887). 1879. Oil on canvas. 40 x 64 inches (101.5 x 162.5 cm). Collection of Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, accession no. PRSMG: P733. Photo credit: Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library. Image reproduced from Art UK for the purpose of non-commercial research.
Wynfield exhibited Ruth and Boaz at the Royal Academy in 1879, no. 478. It was accompanied in the catalogue with the following quotation from Ruth 2, 14: "And she sat beside the reapers, and he reached her parched corn and she did eat." In Wynfield's painting the setting is a wheat field in the Holy Land. Ruth clad in white garments is portrayed sitting on a sheaf of wheat while Boaz stands over her and offers her food to eat. The couple is surrounded by three male field labourers to the right and a young girl and boy to the left of the composition. A row of distant hills is seen in the background in a cloud-filled sky.
The story of Ruth and Boaz comes from the Old Testament Book of Ruth. During a period of famine an Israelite family from Bethlehem, Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion emigrate 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 Orpah reluctantly leaves. In Ruth 1, 16 and 17, Ruth tells Naomi: "And Ruth said, 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 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 goes to the fields to glean and the field she goes to belong to a wealthy landowner named Boaz. He is kind to her because he has heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth told Naomi of Boaz's kindness, and she gleans in his field through the remainder of barley and wheat harvest. Boaz is a close relative of the family of Naomi's late husband. Boaz is therefore obliged by Leviate law to marry Mahlon's widow in order to carry on his family's inheritance. Ruth and Boaz therefore marry and have a son, Obed, who becomes the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David.
When the painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1879 it failed to catch the attention of the critics and wasn't extensively reviewed. The Art Journal merely mentioned that "D. W. Wynfield's Ruth and Boaz (478) is in its drawing at once suave and severe" (173). The critic of The Magazine of Art only stated: "Our remaining sketches are from Mr. Pott's Shopping, and Mr. Wynfield's Ruth and Boaz…The second is one of the few Scriptural pictures in the rooms. Boaz is in the act of pouring parched corn into the hands of Ruth, who looks up gratefully" (165). The magazine illustrated the picture in a vignette on page 162.
The subject of Ruth and Boaz had been a popular one with artists since the time of the Renaissance. It was also favoured by The Nazarenes. Among this nineteenth-century group of artists living in Rome, those who chose to portray this subject included John Friedrich Overbeck in his drawing of 1818, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in his painting, Ruth in Boaz's Field of 1828, and Eduard Carl Friedrich Holbein in his painting of 1830. Contemporary Victorian artists who painted this subject included G. F. Watts in an early oil of c.1835-36; William Dyce, in a watercolour of the early 1850s; D. G. Rossetti, in a watercolour of 1855; Simeon Solomon in a watercolour of 1862; Walter Crane in oil painting of 1863; and Thomas Matthews Rooke in an oil painting of 1876-77. William Blake Richmond also painted an early watercolour of c.1860 of Ruth in the Field of Boaz. In its handling and composition, however, Wynfield's painting most resembles the work of Edwin Long, who painted his own version of Ruth the Gleaner much later in 1889.
Bibliography
"Pictures of the Year. – III." The Magazine of Art II (1879): 161-65.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Art Journal New Series XVIII (1879): 173-75.
Ruth and Boaz. Art UK. Web. 13 December 2023.
Created 13 December 2023