Reuben Rubin Dead at 81

Funeral services were held Tuesday for Reuben Rubin, an internationally famous Israeli artist who once served as his country’s envoy to Rumania. Mr. Rubin died here Sunday night at the age of 81. Many of his paintings, which he always signed “Reuben,” are on display in leading galleries all over the world.

He was born in Galati, Rumania in 1893 and came to Palestine in 1912 to be one of the first students of Boris Schatz, founder of the Bezalel school of art in Jerusalem. Later he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and held his first exhibition in New York in 1920. He returned to Palestine in 1922 and the following year arranged an exhibition of his and other Palestinian artists’ works at the Jerusalem Citadel. Among his most famous paintings are panoramic landscapes of Safed, the Galilean hills and olive groves.

When the State of Israel was established in 1948. Mr. Rubin was named to head Israel’s first diplomatic mission to Rumania. He represented Israel in Bucharest for two years, returning home in 1950 to devote the rest of his life to painting. He once described his brief diplomatic career in these words: “It was a great moment for a poor Jewish boy who left Rumania driven by anti-Semitism to return there as a representative of a Jewish State.”