Bidspirit auction | Reuven Rubin

Reuven Rubin - 1893 - 1974. Galilee and Sea of Galilee Landscape, the 1930s' Oil on canvas, 54x73 cm. Signed. The authenticity of the painting has been confirmed by Ms. Carmela Rubin, Rubin Museum, Tel-Aviv. Provenance: The Leah and Jakub Susskind Collection, Jerusalem. Reuven Rubin painted the landscapes of the Sea of Galilee and the Galilee region countless times, seemingly never tiring of its beauty. The pioneers (Halutzim) of the Second Aliyah, who settled on the shores of this blue lake, called it ”the cruel enchantress” because of its captivating allure. The ancient Sea of Galilee, surrounded by mountains, was captivating not only for pioneers and settlers but also for artists. Any painter who arrived to the land and reached the shores of Jaffa was immediately sent on a journey north to be inspired by the beauty and spirituality of Tiberias and Safed. To paint Safed was considered a rite of passage for any aspiring landscape painter in the Land of Israel, as evidenced by the paintings of Zvi Schreiber from 1924. Two years after returning to the Land of Israel for the second time, in 1925, Rubin painted the Sea of Galilee in several well-known versions, emphasizing its innocence and romantic charm. The imagination of people in the 1920s and 1930s was so deeply imbued with the cult-like magic of the Land of Israel that they allowed themselves to deviate from the realistic view, adding paths, elevating mountains, thickening trees, and casting a veil of legend over the visible landscape. This painting by Rubin, characteristic of his style in the 1930s and 1940s, constructs the magic of the Sea of Galilee with the wisdom of a painter: he embeds the lake, like a jeweler, as a blue jewel in the heart of a precious ornament, surrounded by a mountainous landscape that embraces it. The entire environment is Eastern and rural, replete with terraced houses, olive trees, and holy tombs, illuminated by a golden light. Without being able to foresee the intensity of the political conflict that would erupt in the region in the unforeseeable future, Rubin painted the white path ascending the mountain, the Arab on his donkey slowly climbing, and the olive leaves, which in his painting at that time became silvery, woolly, and soft. The extensive use of white and ”highlights” characterizes the second phase of Rubin's landscape painting in the Land of Israel: what was painted a decade earlier in dry, flat layers of color, creating separate forms, now became blotchy and blurred, emphasized by strong lighting. The Arab village, the rider with his donkey, the grove of trees - they are all there, but the entire space appears still, empty, and dreamlike, as dictated by Rubin's and his contemporaries' veiled vision. And the Sea of Galilee, blue as a dream, is calm, without a single ripple. Dr. Tali Tamir