Ruth and Naomi, 1886. Oil on canvas; 65 3/8 x 81 3/4 inches (166.2 x 207.6 cm). Collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG114. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Calderon exhibited Ruth and Naomi at the Royal Academy in 1886, no. 21. The Walker Art Gallery purchased it after being shown at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1886, no. 1,040. The story is taken 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 told her daughter-in-laws to return to their mothers and remarry and Orpath reluctantly left. In Ruth 1, verses 16 and 17: "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."
The setting of the picture is a desert landscape with the rosy pink tone of the composition intended to represent early morning. In the painting Orpah, the figure on the right, has gathered her belongings and is prepared to remain in Moab with her own family. To the left of the composition Ruth is shown passionately clasping and gazing at her mother-in-law Naomi. The nature of this embrace has proven to be somewhat controversial in this day and age. While the story has normally been treated in art as a platonic friendship between the two women, the painting shows them in a passionate embrace that could easily be interpreted as exceeding the normal bounds of friendship and suggestive of a lesbian relationship. It is doubtful, however, that this was in any way Calderon's intention and definitely the painting was not interpreted as such in the 19th century.
E. R. Dibdin in The Magazine of Art, for instance, interpreted this embrace simply as a touching example of the friendship between the two women: "Ruth and Naomi by P. H. Calderon, R.A., illustrates the most charming of Bible idylls in a delightful manner. The painter's penchant for loveliness in woman has made even Naomi good-looking, and Ruth is of extreme beauty, while her attitude and gesture are touchingly expressed. Orpah stands apart in open-eyed wonder at the reluctance of Ruth to leave their mother-in-law. The whole is set in a sterile eastern landscape, beautified by the rosy light of sunset" (20). When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum also noted nothing improper or unusual in the embrace: "Mr. Calderon's Ruth and Naomi (21) is the best design he has produced for some time past. The dignified grace of Ruth's action as she puts her arms about her mother-in-law is a good element in the picture, and full of spontaneity. Ruth is clad in white from head to foot, while Naomi wears grey and a trailing black veil. These colours tell happily in the landscape, which is not of the best and is rather like a translation of studies by another hand. The attendant in blue is the weakest part of the picture" (260).
The Portfolio felt the painting's unusual colouring was based on oriental decorative principles: "Mr. Calderon has taken a fresh departure in the direction of Eastern themes. His Ruth and Naomi is a singularly luminous arrangement, in which two dark-robed figures and one in white are thrown up like enamels upon the pale rosy ochreous background of mountains, after what seems to us the principle of some Oriental decorations" (123).
The critic of The Art Journal found neither the figures nor the landscape to be convincing: "No. 21. Ruth and Naomi , P. H. Calderon, R.A. The figures of the mother and daughter are beautiful and impressive, but it is safe to say no such Ruth and Naomi ever dwelt in Moab or Bethlehem; but then, again, neither Moab nor Bethlehem is like the country depicted by Mr. Calderon" (185). He was not the only one to recognize problems with the landscape depicted. Colonel Yule in The Athenaeum in 1886 pointed out a curious anachronism in the painting. In the foreground of the painting to the left a clump of prickly-pear cactus is represented. The origins of this genus are in North American and it was unknown in the Old World until it was introduced by the Spaniards (788).
The harshest criticism of the picture came from the reviewer of The Spectator: "What of the largest work, Ruth and Naomi, by Philip H. Calderon. It is our old friend, the conventional long-robed sacred figure picture, with an Eastern landscape painted somewhere in the Hampstead Road, and, from its own point of view, very well painted too. It is very clean, very bright, and very inoffensive, save to those who try and think whether these folks and their surroundings could ever have looked like this. And for those who think of the matter from that point of view, all the prettiness and all the dexterity of the work go for nothing, it is essentially trivial in its main conception, and incomplete in its details; nor can one accept from a technical point of view its smooth, slab brushwork as good painting, its thin brightness as good colour, or its conventional arrangement as good composition. Well drawn from the Academic point of view, and very suitable for reproduction in some colour form, is the best word we can say for this picture" (719). G. B. Shaw in The World felt that his picture very much bore the stamp of the St. John's Wood Clique: "No one, seeing her, need complain of having to turn his back on the salmon-coloured radiance of Mr. P. H. Calderon's Ruth and Naomi, an Oriental scene which bears the stamp of the N. W. postal district in every touch" (522).
Despite the obvious deficiencies with this picture it proved popular with the public. When a competition, with money prizes being given by the Pall Mall Gazette, was established by a popular plebiscite to determine which were the pictures of the year at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1886, Calderon's Ruth and Naomi was voted the best religious picture (Art Journal, 1886, 320).
Bibliography
"Art Chronicle." The Portfolio XVII (1886): 123-24.
"Art Notes." The Art Journal New Series XXV (1886); 319-20.
Dibdin, E. Rimbault. "The Liverpool Corporation Collection. The Walker Art Gallery." The Magazine of Art XII (1889): 14-20.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series XXV (1886): 185-87.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LXXXVIII (May 8, 1886): 480.
"Fine Art Gossip." The Athenaeum No. 3059 (June 12, 1886): 787-88.
Morris, Edward. Victorian & Edwardian Painting in the Walker Art Gallery and at Sudley House. London: HMSO Publications Centre, 1996, 61-63.
Shaw, George Bernard. "The Royal Academy Exhibition." The World (May 5, 1886): 522.
Stephens, Frederic George. "The Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 3054 (May 8, 1886): 620-22.
Created 13 July 2023