Reuven Rubin

The Fisherman,
Gouache on paper laid down on canvas,
266X200 cm.
Signed.

The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Ms. Carmela Rubin, Rubin Museum, Tel-Aviv.

Provenance: Rutie Ofer Collection.

In 1966 Rubin designed a rug (now in private collections in Canada and the U.S.) identical to the painting before us, which was probably the proto-type. A photo of the rug appears in the autobiography ”Reuven” (Massada, Tel Aviv, 1973, page 181). More significant is the title Reuven gave the rug – ”Miraculous Draught of Fish”. And so, when studying the motif of fishing in Reuven’s work, we learn of its beginning in a series of woodcuts, ”God – Wishers”, from 1923, a series that combined Jewish and Christian content expressed by the painter , who has just come to Israel, in a Zionist/religious manner.
Here the woodcut, ”Fisherman from the Galilee”, represented a bald and bearded figure, robed and barefoot, holding a fishnet, a basket with two fish inside, on a white background with fish swimming in the bottom (the Kinneret?). In the upper part, Middle Eastern houses, hills and trees. In the Jewish-Christian context of the print series, ”The Fisherman from the Galilee” was, of course, a paraphrase of Jesus’ ”Miraculous Draught of Fish”, eternalized in the ”The Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish” in the North-West of the Kinneret.
Here, as told, Jesus fed over 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish (”the Gospel by Mark”, chapter 6, 34-44). The fish alluded in the basket resting by the feet of ”The Fisherman from the Galilee”. In the same year, 1923, Reuven painted ”Fisherman in Tiberius” in oil, the fisherman depicted with Arab dress and appearance, on the bank of the Kinneret, a basket of fish in his hand.
The charm of the East and of the Arab natives has been emphasized, its connection to working the land, fishing etc. The height of this idealization of the Arab (an example of the Hebrew pioneer, until 1929, also see the monumental Arab fishermen paintings by Menachem Shemi and Israel Paldi from the late 1920’s) will find its expression in 1928 in a painting by Reuven, ”The Arab Fish Vendor”, depicting an Arab (with a defined Semite profile) selling gold fish, symbols of fortune and luck, their color tones reflected also in the pink-goldish shirt of the vendor.
Here, in this painting, made decades later in the manner of the biblical lithographs by Reuven of the same decade, the artist returns to the Christian motif, that elevates the fisherman to a Messianic height: Reuven composes him as a holy biblical icon, the fishing net in his hand with an abundance of fish, floating over the blue background, somewhat celestial, possibly the blue of the Kinneret, over which Jesus walked miraculously.
(Translated and adapted by Gidon Ofrat).

Estimated price: $150,000 - $200,000

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About: Reuven Rubin

Born in Romania in 1893 Rubin is known as a leading prominent Israeli artist to this day. At age 19 he came to the then Palestine and began his studies at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem. Less than a year later he left for Paris and enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but had to leave France when the First World War broke out. He whiled the years of the war in his native Romania and then traveled to New York in 1921 where he had an exhibition sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz. Following his return to Europe, in 1923 he returned to Palestine to become one of the founding fathers of Israeli art. Rubin’s early paintings from the 1920s’ seem to portray the “Zionist dream”, indeed, an idealized perception of the Jewish return to the historical homeland. He eagerly depicted the natural sights and the diversified human landscape of the land – traditional devout Jews, secular pioneers and Arabs – his bright vivid colors reflecting the Mediterranean sunlight and bypassing the tensions following the Arab riots at the end of that decade, the awareness to which came only later. Rubin’s style was naïve, inspired by European modernism (most particularly the French Henri Rousseau comes to mind but also Derain and Matisse) and reflecting a child-like enthusiasm vis-à-vis the new life forming around. The local flora and fauna, so often incorporated into his compositions of landscapes and portraits alike, are not merely decorative but rather they symbolize renewal, growth, harmony and above all that newcomer’s quest to instantly feel rooted in the new environment. Rubin’s depictions of Tel Aviv growing on the sand dunes, his panoramic landscapes of Jerusalem, his numerous depictions of the road to Safed, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, became his trademark. His depictions of the Judean hills and the silvery-green Galilean olive groves became gradually more ethereal, immersed in a mystical atmosphere. In 1973 he was awarded the Israel Prize for his lifetime achievement in art. His paintings hang in the Knesset Building, in the Presidential Residence in Jerusalem, at the Prime Minister’s Residence and offices, in leading Israeli museums and in public and private collections in Israel and abroad. In 1983 The Rubin Museum opened to the public in Rubin’s former family home in Tel Aviv, showcasing his art in particular and Israeli art in general.