Lot n° 42
Estimation :
20000 - 30000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 28 160EUR
Louis HERSENT (Paris 1777 - 1860)
Ruth and... - Lot 42 - Ader
Louis HERSENT (Paris 1777 - 1860)
Ruth and Booz
Canvas
Monogrammed lower left LH
127 x 160 cm
Provenance:
Commissioned by Louis XVIII in 1819;
Collection of the Countess of Cayla.
Exhibition :
Salon de 1822, n° 687 : " At midnight, Boaz was frightened and confused when he saw a young woman lying at his feet, and he said to her " who are you ? she answered : I am Ruth your servant, spread your blanket over your servant because you are the closest relative of my husband... "(Excerpt from the Vence Bible). Property of the Ministry of the King's Household.
Bibliography:
Le Moniteur universel, 1 June 1822, p. 4;
Journal de Paris et des départements, 30 May 1822, p. 3;
A. Duchesne, Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture ou recueil des principaux Tableaux, Statues et Bas-reliefs des collections publiques particulières de l'Europe dessiné et gravé à l'eau forte par Réveil, Paris, 1828-1834, tome 1, p. 65;
L'Artiste, Salon de 1831, p. 201;
Le Moniteur universel, 20 février 1846, p. 431;
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Tome XIV, 1863, pp. 219-220 (engraving by Pierre Alexandre Tardieu after Hersent);
A. de Saint Vincent, Les Beaux-Arts, 15 October 1860;
R. Alcouffe, " Le Goût de la comtesse du Cayla ", Dossier de l'art, n° 5, 1991, pp. 14 and 15;
Catalogue of the exhibition Louis Hersent (1777-1860), peintre d'histoire et portraitiste, Paris, Musée de la Vie Romantique, 29 September 1993 - 9 January 1994, n° 46 (engraving after the original painting not located).
Our painting is the royal commission exhibited at the 1822 Salon.
In 1819, King Louis XVIII commissioned Louis Hersent to depict the biblical episode where Ruth slips under the blanket of the sleeping Boaz. From this union, Obed, the ancestor of David and Christ, was born. Initially intended for the young miniaturist Lizynka Rue (Mme de Mirbel), the work was eventually delivered to Madame du Cayla, who had meanwhile become the sovereign's favourite.
Beyond the neoclassical frieze composition, the effect of moonlight and the oriental turban are reminiscent of Girodet's works and illustrate the transition to Romanticism. On the strength of its success, the painting was reproduced by Alexandre Tardieu's engraving, caricatured by Villain on the subject of Diana and Medor, and sculpted in bas-relief on Hersent's tomb by François Gaspard Aimé Lanno.
A smaller version of this composition is known (Canvas, 60.3 x 73.2 cm; anonymous sale, Paris, Christie's, 29 September 2015, no. 536), as well as two preparatory sketches in private collections.
A student of Regnault, Hersent won the second Prix de Rome in 1797, then enjoyed success under the Restoration as a history painter (Louis XVI rescuing the unfortunate during the winter of 1788 at the Château de Versailles) and exhibited at all the salons from 1804 to 1831. He then concentrated on portraiture under the July Monarchy (Portrait of Queen Marie Amélie and her children, Versailles Musée du Château). Louis Hersent's work has been the subject of renewed interest since the 1993 retrospective at the Musée de la Vie romantique.
Victor Hugo drew inspiration from this story for his famous 1859 poem from La Légende des Siècles:
Ruth was dreaming and Boaz was sleeping; the grass was black,
The bells of the flocks were fluttering vaguely;
An immense goodness was falling from the firmament;
It was the quiet hour when the lions go to drink.
All rested in Ur and Jerimadeth;
The stars glittered in the deep, dark sky;
The thin, clear crescent among these flowers of shadow
Shone in the west, and Ruth wondered,
Motionless, half-opening his eye beneath his veils,
What god, what reaper of eternal summer,
Had, in going away, carelessly thrown
That golden sickle into the field of stars.
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