"Naboth i His Vineyard"

Ahab is seen in the top left-hand corner, looking down enviously on Naboth's vineyard, which neighbours his land. In this productive vineyard, Naboth is reclining, and thoroughly enjoying the inheritance that has come to him from his father — he is admiring and tasting the grapes, with his own little child cuddled up beside him. The whole story of Ahab's covetousness, the murder of Naboth to which it leads, and Ahab's own repentance, is told in Kings I, Chapter 21. But here, the emphasis is only on the young man's complete, sensuous delight in his inheritance, and the promise of being able to pass it on to his own children. The painting is Pre-Raphaelite in detail, but what makes it most dramatic and appealing is the expressiveness of the three faces, and the precious sense of Naboth's happiness — fleeting as it is — before the coming of disaster. Lust as he might, Ahab will never be able to experience that.

James Smetham (1821 - 1889) was an English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter and engraver, a follower of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  Smetham worked in a range of genres, including religious and literary themes as well as portraiture; but he is perhaps best known as a landscape painter.