First Fruits

The Israeli painter Reuven Rubin was born in an isolated village in Romania. He studied at the newly founded Bezalel School in Jerusalem for a year and then for several years in Paris. After World War I, he lived in Italy, the United States, and Romania. He settled permanently in the Land of Israel in 1922 and became one of its best-known painters. He is most known for his figurative paintings of the life and landscape of the Jewish homeland, which he rendered in an orientalized, idealized manner.