Ruth II

1922

Let us examine this portrait of the artist’s wife presented at the Commemorative Exhibition in 1942. It looks very classic. But why does the ear seem unfinished and oddly willowy ? And the lips, very thin, largely reveal a row of teeth caricatured as in a comic strip, an aggressive grin really. The supposedly clumsy drawing has a meaning. Dick Beer’s wife Ruth had sharp years, but he himself became gradually deaf while having a good ear for music. Ruth was ambitious (see the French expression “avoir les dents longues”), had a sharp tongue (“avoir la dent dure” in French) and was good in business, while Dick was hopeless in money matters. Getting married in 1918, they were separated a couple of years after but remained close friends. Such a determined woman (see her iron-look in the portrait), wishing to be protective, could not have been easy to endure for a poor and cursed painter with a male super-ego.