Ruth by David Booth

A new commission by artist David Booth.

Actor and producer Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, raised in Limerick, and studied at Trinity College Dublin and the British American Drama Academy. She is known for her critically acclaimed performances on stage and screen, among them roles in the movies Breakfast on Pluto (2005), Loving (2021) and Passing (2021). She has appeared in many television productions, and received several nominations and awards. In 2025 she received her second Emmy nomination, for her role in the television series Presumed Innocent. In 2017, she received an Oscar nomination in the Actress in a Lead Role category for her performance in Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols.

Having completed a BFA at Wexford Campus School of Art in 2013, David Booth moved to Dublin to establish himself as a full-time artist. He has exhibited both in Ireland and abroad, won the Evans Painting Prize in 2016, and was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2019. This commissioned portrait of Ruth Negga is part of the Portrait Prize 2022 (then the Zurich Portrait Prize). Booth was shortlisted for the prize on two earlier occasions (2018 and 2020). His work features in both public and private collections in Ireland.

Booth considered many possible settings when preparing his portrait of the actor. These included Trinity College, where Ruth Negga had studied, and a coffee shop he knew she had frequented. He and his subject finally settled on the courtyard in the National Gallery of Ireland, as it provided filtered light that would ensure good preparatory photographs. Booth wanted his subject to be looking directly at the viewer, and though he took scores of photographs, he ended up using his first as the basis for his painting.