David Bomberg

Lilian Bomberg, from whom acquired by the present owner

There is a further study on the reverse.

Although the present drawing cannot be directly related to any of the major paintings Bomberg produced in the period immediately prior to the outbreak of WWI, it carries with it many of the elements that had made his work by this point amongst the most adventurous being produced by a British artist.

The under-drawing comprises a very individual method that Bomberg employed sporadically in the 1913-14 period which builds up the composition using overlapping straight lines, and in conjunction with the very distinctive palette, might therefore have some connection with a now lost painting entitled Reading From Torah, which is now known only from a double-sided gouache and drawing, Composition: Study for Reading From Torah (Private Collection), illustrated by Cork (Richard Cork, David Bomberg, Yale, New Haven & London 1987, illustrations C11 & 114). The latter exhibits the same drawing method as the present study and shows the composition in reverse in the drawing verso, as is the case here. If this work does indeed relate to Reading From Torah, as Cork suggests, then it is possible that the present work is connected to this group and would thus justify the comments made by T.E.Hulme on Reading From Torah in his review of the exhibition that its 'abstract shapes here do reinforce a quite human and even dramatic effect, at the same time being interesting in themselves merely as a construction of shapes'. (T.E.Hulme, 'Modern Art IV - Mr David Bomberg's Show', The New Age, 9^th July 1914).