Property of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London. Proceeds to be reinvested in the Ben Uri Research Unit recording the Jewish and immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900

Isaac Lichtenstein (1887-1981)
Head of a Yemenite Woman: Ruth II

Signed
Oil on canvas
37 x 22 ½ inches
Framed: 41 x 25 ½ inches

Executed in 1921

Provenance: Purchased by the Ben Uri Museum in 1925

Literature: Simon Millner, Lichtenstein, London, Machmadim Art Editions, 1949, illustrated plate XI Walter Schwabe and Julia Weiner, eds.
Jewish Artists: The Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 69.

Born in Lodz, Poland, Lichtenstein travelled widely as a young man, moving to Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, where he joined the loose group of emigre artists, mainly of Eastern-European Jewish origin living and working together at La Ruche (The Beehive) in Montparnasse. Fellow members of the Ecole des Paris (or Ecole de Montparnasse) at the time were Pascin, Kremegne, Kisling and Modigliani. Lichtenstein was also active in the London art scene where he helped establish the Ben Uri Museum in 1915. In 1918 he volunteered with the Jewish Legion during the First World War and his travels in British Mandate Palestine inspired two portraits of Ruth.
We know from the title of the present work that he chose a Yemenite woman as a model for the biblical Ruth; a woman whose Eastern origin and traditional garb more closely approximated his ideal of what the biblical Ruth would have looked like. In her arms she holds a generous bouquet of wheat and barley which she has gleaned from Boaz’s fields, adding to the rich splendor of the portait. The elegant, elongated and abstracted features recall the work of Modigliani.

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Condition: Good condition