David Bomberg

Acquired by the late owner by the 1980s

Original canvas. There is some paint loss at the left of the lower horizontal edge, and also to an area at the lower left edge. There are some very fine lines of paint cracking at the right side of the composition. On close examination it is possible to see some traces of light surface dirt. With the exception of the above the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of florescence or retouching. The work is presented in a painted frame with a linen slip. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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By the late 1910s Bomberg’s career in England was inching towards a standstill; his struggle to reconcile his creative pursuits with the expectations of collectors matched by a growing disillusion with the art establishment. It was his foremost proponent, Muirhead Bone, who eventually intuited his need for a drastic change of scenery, and prompted his travel to Palestine in 1923, on the initial commission as the official artist for the Zionist Organisation. Though his employment began here, through the assistance of such patrons as Sir Edward Marsh, he soon established fruitful connections with Sir Ronald Storrs, Military Governor of Jerusalem, and his circle of friends. Principally concerned with the preservation and restoration of Jerusalem, this patronage underlies the remarkably diverse and pivotal body of work, the present piece included, that Bomberg produced over the next five years.

For a man who had never travelled further afield than Paris, Jerusalem’s blazing sun and ceaseless bustle was, at first, an assault on the senses. However it took little time for its primordial beauty to enrapture Bomberg, and his complete absorption its architectural and topographical nuances. From detailed maplike panoramas to, as here, tightly rendered oil sketches, he cast aside the dominant human figure and front line abstract avant-gardism of his recent work, for a seemingly unfamiliar complex of ‘flat roofs, vaults, domes, street arches, abutments and buttresses’ (The Artist, quoted in Richard Cork, David Bomberg, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, p.146). By Bomberg’s own account, however, this dramatic shift expanded a long-established concern for pictorial structure. Bomberg’s turn towards representation and elemental nature, like much contemporary work in the wake of the First World War, strove to reconstruct a new visual language.

In this small but dynamic landscape Bomberg captures a closely framed view of the Garden of Gethsemane, a site of biblical significance and the subject of various canonical paintings before his, including The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane from the Studio of El Greco (National Gallery, London). The garden lies at the foot of the Mount of Olives, which was just within sight from Bomberg’s small residence, and a particular focal point in various works. It is perhaps here, more so than such sprawling records as Siloam and the Mount of Olives, 1923 (Private Collection), that his concerns are most succinctly expressed. The immediacy and closeness of the composition places him right within the garden, its proximity accentuated by the physicality of the surface and eradication of detail in the freely handled and thickly applied paint. From this position, Bomberg reduces the scene to its essential forms. His palette is confined to earthy tones of greens, browns, pinks and blues, and the hillside, trees and architecture are constructed through rigorously simplified brushstrokes, delineated by the geometric charcoal lines evident on the canvas beneath. This critical approach was later to impact his pictorial approach of landscapes painted at Toledo, Cuenca and Ronda.