Naomi and the Child Obed

Naomi and the Child Obed

Simeon Solomon

Wood engraving by the Dalziels [1862].

6¼ x 5 inches

Alex Foley, Art Pictures from the Old Testament, p.143.

Ruth iv: 14–17. An illustration depicting family love, with Naomi putting her hand on Ruth’s head; both women contemplate the child. The facial expressions are dignified and restrained, but the emotion is amplified by its undemonstrativeness, very much in the manner of sonorous High Renaissance paintings of the Virgin and Child. Depicted as eternal archetypes, the figures are contained, nevertheless, in a domestic setting, which invests the scene with a sense of commonplace reality.

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