David Garshen Bomberg (5 December 1890 – 19 August 1957) was a British painter, and one of the

Whitechapel Boys The name "Whitechapel Boys" identifies a loosely-knit group of Anglo- Jewish writers and artists of the early 20th century. It is named after Whitechapel, which contained one of London's main Jewish settlements and from which many of its member ...

. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

under

Henry Tonks Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher. He was one of the first British art ...

, and which included Mark Gertler,

Stanley Spencer Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA (30 June 1891 – 14 December 1959) was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the sma ...

, C.R.W. Nevinson, and

Dora Carrington Dora de Houghton Carrington (29 March 1893 – 11 March 1932), known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton ...

. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

and

futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects suc ...

in the years immediately preceding

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme. He was expelled from the

in 1913, with agreement between the senior teachers Tonks, Frederick Brown and Philip Wilson Steer, because of the audacity of his breach from the conventional approach of that time.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson Jean Moorcroft Wilson (born 3 October 1941) is a British academic and writer, best known as a biographer and critic of First World War poets and poetry. A lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London, she has written a two-volume biograp ...

— ''Isaac Rosenberg'' (2008) Whether because his faith in the machine age had been shattered by his experiences as a private soldier in the trenches or because of the pervasive retrogressive attitude towards modernism in Britain Bomberg moved to a more figurative style in the 1920s and his work became increasingly dominated by portraits and landscapes drawn from nature. Gradually developing a more

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

technique, he travelled widely through the Middle East and Europe. From 1945 to 1953, he worked as a teacher at

Borough Polytechnic London South Bank University (LSBU) is a public university in Elephant and Castle, London. It is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name. Founded in 1892 as the Borough Po ...

(now

London South Bank University London South Bank University (LSBU) is a public university in Elephant and Castle, London. It is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name. Founded in 1892 as the Borough ...

) in London, where his pupils included

Frank Auerbach Frank Helmut Auerbach (born 29 April 1931) is a German-British painter. Born in Germany, he has been a naturalised British subject since 1947. He is considered one of the leading names in the School of London, with fellow artists Francis Bacon ...

, Leon Kossoff, Philip Holmes, Cliff Holden,

Edna Mann Edna Mann (1926 – 1985) was a British painter and co-founder of the Borough Group of artists. Mann was educated at Romford County High School for Girls and then studied art at the South-East Essex Technical College and School of Art. Here i ...

, Dorothy Mead,

Gustav Metzger Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was a German artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike. Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in A ...

Dennis Creffield Dennis Creffield (29 January 1931 – 26 June 2018) was a British artist with work owned by major British and worldwide art collections, including the Tate Gallery, The British Museum, Arts Council of England, the Government Art Collection, The L ...

, Cecil Bailey, and

Miles Richmond Miles Peter Richmond (19 December 1922 – 7 October 2008) was a British artist. Born Peter Richmond, in Isleworth, Middlesex, he added the name Miles in the 1980s, and became generally known as such. From 1940 to 1943 he attended Kingston Sc ...

. David Bomberg House, one of the student halls of residences at London South Bank University, is named in his honour. He was married to landscape painter

Lilian Holt Lilian Thirza Charlotte Holt (1898–1983) was a British artist, also known by her married name, Bomberg. She was a founding member of the Borough Group. Her dedication to her partner and family limited her career and opportunities as an artist. ...

Early years

Bomberg was born in the

Lee Bank Lee Bank was an inner city area of Birmingham, England. It was part of the Edgbaston and Ladywood wards, inside the Middle Ring Road or Middleway, which surrounds Central Birmingham. Lee Bank's neighbouring areas are Edgbaston, Ladywood, High ...

area of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

on 5 December 1890."David Bomberg"
Retrieved 29 January 2014. He was the seventh of eleven children of a Polish

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

immigrant leatherworker, Abraham, and his wife Rebecca. He was Orthodox but she less so and supported David's painting ambitions."David Bomberg: an East End childhood"
''www.tandfonline.com'' In 1895, his family moved to

Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...

in the

East End of London The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have univ ...

where he was to spend the rest of his childhood. After studying art at

City and Guilds The City and Guilds of London Institute is an educational organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded on 11 November 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies – to develop a national system of technical education, the institute has ...

, Bomberg returned to Birmingham to train as a

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

but quit to study under

Walter Sickert Walter Richard Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942) was a German-born British painter and printmaker who was a member of the Camden Town Group of Post-Impressionist artists in early 20th-century London. He was an important influence on d ...

Westminster School of Art The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London. History The Westminster School of Art was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Royal Architectural Museum. H. M. Bateman described ...

from 1908 to 1910. Sickert's emphasis on the study of form and the representation of the "gross material facts" of urban life were an important early influence on Bomberg, alongside Roger Fry's 1910 exhibition ''Manet and the Post-Impressionists'', where he first saw the work of

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

. Bomberg's artistic studies had involved considerable financial hardship but in 1911, with the help of

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...

and the Jewish Education Aid Society, he was able to attain a place at the

The Slade

At the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised a ...

Bomberg was one of the remarkable generation of artists described by their drawing master

as the School's second and last "crisis of brilliance" and which included

, Paul Nash,

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in De ...

, Mark Gertler and

Isaac Rosenberg Isaac Rosenberg (25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918) was an English poet and artist. His ''Poems from the Trenches'' are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during the First World War. Early life Isaac Rosenberg was born ...

. (The "first crisis of brilliance" had occurred in the 1890s, with

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

, William Orpen and others.) Bomberg and Rosenberg, from similar backgrounds, had met some years earlier and became close friends as a result of their mutual interests. The emphasis in teaching at the Slade was on technique and draughtsmanship, to which Bomberg was well suited – winning the Tonks Prize for his drawing of fellow student Rosenberg in 1911. His own style was rapidly moving away from these traditional methods, however, particularly under the influence of the March 1912 London exhibition of Italian

Futurists Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

that exposed him to the dynamic abstraction of

Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...

and Gino Severini, and Fry's second ''Post Impressionist'' exhibition in October of the same year, which displayed the works of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prim ...

and the

Fauvists Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

alongside those of

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major i ...

and

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

. Bomberg's response to this became clear in paintings such as ''Vision of Ezekiel'' (1912), in which he proved "he could absorb the most experimental European ideas, fuse these with Jewish influences and come up with a robust alternative of his own." His dynamic, angular representations of the human form, combining the geometrical abstraction of

with the energy of the

, established his reputation as a forceful member of the avant-garde and the most audacious of his contemporaries; bringing him to the attention of Wyndham Lewis (who visited him in 1912) and

Filippo Marinetti Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye de ...

. In 1913, the year in which he was expelled from the Slade because of the radicalism of his approach, he travelled to France with

Jacob Epstein Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911. He often produce ...

, where among others he met

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. Biography Early years Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. In ...

and

Pre-war avant-garde

Expelled from the Slade in the Summer of 1913, Bomberg formed a series of loose affiliations with several groups involved with the contemporary English avant-garde, embarking on a brief and acrimonious association with the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton St ...

Omega Workshops The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913. Shone, Richard. (1999) ''The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant''. Princeton: Princeton University ...

before exhibiting with the

Camden Town Group The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists founded in 1911 and active until 1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London. History In 1908, critic Frank ...

in December 1913. His enthusiasm for the dynamism and aesthetics of the machine age gave him a natural affinity with

's emerging

vorticist Vorticism was a London-based Modernism, modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist mani ...

movement, and five of his works featured in the founding exhibition of the

London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...

in 1914. Still, Bomberg was staunchly independent and despite Lewis' attempts he never officially joined Vorticism. In July 1914 he refused involvement with the Vorticist

literary magazine A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and lett ...

BLAST Blast or The Blast may refer to: *Explosion, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner *Detonation, an exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front Film * ''Blast'' (1997 film), ...

'' and in June of the following year his work featured only in the "Invited to show" section of the vorticist exhibition at London's Dore Gallery. In 1914 he met his first wife Alice Mayes a resourceful and practical woman about ten years older than him who had worked with Kosslov's Ballet Company. Their mutual interest in experimental dance and the Russian ballet may have helped bring them together. Alice helped Bomberg in the early part of his career both with financial support and in influencing his appearance and character. 1914 saw the highpoint of his early career – a solo exhibition at the

Chenil Gallery The Chenil Gallery (often referred to as the Chenil Galleries, or New Chenil Galleries) was a British art gallery and sometime-music studio in Chelsea, London between 1905 and 1927, and later the location of various businesses referencing this ear ...

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

which attracted positive reviews from Roger Fry and

T. E. Hulme Thomas Ernest Hulme (; 16 September 1883 – 28 September 1917) was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism. He was an aesthetic philosopher and the 'fathe ...

and attracted favourable attention from experimental artists nationally and internationally. The exhibition featured several of Bomberg's early masterpieces, most notably ''

The Mud Bath ''The Mud Bath'' is a 1914 oil-on-canvas painting by David Bomberg. The work is considered a masterpiece of Bomberg's work in this period. Bomberg was a founder member of the London Group, and the painting is considered a leading example of V ...

'' (1914), which was hung on an outside wall surrounded by

Union Flag The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. Although no law has been passed making the Union Flag the official national flag of the United Kingdom, it has effectively become such through precedent. ...

s – causing "the horses drawing the 29 bus... to shy at it as they came round the corner of King's Road."

"I look upon Nature while I live in a steel city" he explained in the exhibition catalogue "I APPEAL to a Sense of Form ... My object is the construction of Pure Form. I reject everything in painting that is not Pure Form."

With the help of

, Bomberg sold two paintings from this exhibition to the influential American collector John Quinn. Alice and David enjoyed a trip to Paris with the proceeds of the sale of several pictures in 1914 which led to them marrying in 1916 after Bomberg had enlisted in the Royal Engineers in November 1915.

World War I and after

Despite the success of his Chenil Gallery exhibition Bomberg continued to be dogged by financial problems. In 1915, he enlisted in the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is head ...

, transferring in 1916 to the

King's Royal Rifle Corps The King's Royal Rifle Corps was an infantry rifle regiment of the British Army that was originally raised in British North America as the Royal American Regiment during the phase of the Seven Years' War in North America known in the United ...

and in March of that year, shortly after marrying his first wife, being sent to the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers * Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a maj ...

was to bring a profound change to Bomberg's outlook. His experiences of its mechanized slaughter and the death of his brother in the trenches – as well as those of his friend

and his supporter

– permanently destroyed his faith in the aesthetics of the machine age. This can be seen most clearly in his commission for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, ''Sappers at Work'' (1918–1919): his first version of the painting was dismissed as a "futurist abortion" and was replaced by a second far more representational version. The

artist's book Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects. Overview Artists' books have employed a ...

Russian Ballet Russian ballet (russian: Русский балет) (french: Ballet russe) is a form of ballet characteristic of or originating from Russia. Imperial Russian Ballet Until 1689, ballet in Russia was nonexistent (ballet has its origins in the cour ...

'', 1919, was the last work to use the pre-war vorticist idiom. Bomberg self-published this work whilst waiting for the Canadian Government's verdict on ''Sappers at Work''; the next few years was to see him 'experimenting with ways of making his stark pre-war style more rounded and organic'. In radical opposition to the prevailing currents in avant-garde art, stimulated as these were by the enthusiasm for mechanization in Constructivism in Russia following the

Revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

, Bomberg went to paint and draw in Palestine between 1923 and 1927, with the assistance of the Zionist Organization. There he brought together the geometric energies of his pre-war work as an "English cubist" with the tradition of figurative observation of the English landscape school of

Turner Turner may refer to: People and fictional characters *Turner (surname), a common surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name * Turner (given name), a list of people with the given name *One who uses a lathe for turni ...

Constable A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in criminal law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. A constable is commonly the rank of an officer within the police. Other peop ...

, Girtin and

John Sell Cotman John Sell Cotman (16 May 1782 – 24 July 1842) was an English marine and landscape painter, etcher, illustrator, author and a leading member of the Norwich School of painters. Born in Norwich, the son of a silk merchant and lace dealer, C ...

The return to order

From there followed Bomberg's great period of painting and drawing in landscape, in Spain at Toledo (1928),

Ronda Ronda () is a town in the Spanish province of Málaga. It is located about west of the city of Málaga, within the autonomous community of Andalusia. Its population is about 35,000. Ronda is known for its cliff-side location and a deep chasm ...

(1934–35 and 1954–57) and

Asturias Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensiv ...

(1935), in

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ...

(1948) and intermittently in Britain, perhaps most powerfully in Cornwall. A six-month stay at

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in the second half of 1933, following

Hitler's Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

seizure of power in Germany, led Bomberg on his return to London to immediate resignation from the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, he painted ''Evening in the City of London'' (1944), showing the blitzed city viewed rising up to a triumphant, surviving

St Paul's Cathedral St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglicanism, Anglican cathedral in London and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London ...

on the horizon, since described as the "most moving of all paintings of wartime Britain" ( Martin Harrison); a series of flower paintings saturated with turbulent feeling; and his single commission as a war artist, a series of "Bomb Store" paintings (1942) expressing Bomberg's expanded first-hand sense of the destructive powers of modern technology in warfare. These "Bomb Store" paintings convey a premonitory sense of the massive explosion that destroyed the underground store two years later, killing 68 people, and bear comparison with

Piranesi Giovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi (; also known as simply Piranesi; 4 October 1720 – 9 November 1778) was an Italian Classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheri ...

's ''Carceri'' etchings. Bomberg's superb draughtsmanship was expressed also in a lifelong series of portraits, from the early period of his Botticelli-like "Head of a Poet" (1913), a pencil portrait of his friend the poet

for which he won the Henry Tonks Prize at the

Slade Slade are an English rock band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966. They rose to prominence during the glam rock era in the early 1970s, achieving 17 consecutive top 20 hits and six number ones on the UK Singles Chart. The ''British Hit Singles ...

, to his "Last Self-Portrait" (1956), painted at Ronda, a meditation also on

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally cons ...

. Unable to get a teaching position after

in any of the most prestigious London art schools, Bomberg became the most exemplary teacher of the immediate post-war period in Britain, working part-time in a bakery school at the

(now

) in the working-class borough of Southwark. Though his students received no grant and were awarded no diploma, he attracted devoted and highly energetic pupils, with whom he exhibited on an equal basis in London, Oxford, and Cambridge in two important artists' groupings in which he was the leading light, the

Borough Group The Borough Group was a collective of mid-20th-century artists from the Borough area of Southwark, South London. The group was associated with David Bomberg, who was then teaching a number of the artists that formed the group at the Borough Poly ...

(1946–51) and the Borough Bottega (1953–55). He developed a deeply considered philosophy of art, set out in several pieces of writing, which he summed up in the phrase, "The Spirit in the Mass". Following a collapse in

, Bomberg died in London in 1957, his critical stock rising sharply thereafter. One of Bomberg's admirers, the painter

Patrick Swift Patrick may refer to: *Patrick (given name), list of people and fictional characters with this name *Patrick (surname), list of people with this name People *Saint Patrick (c. 385–c. 461), Christian saint *Gilla Pátraic (died 1084), Patrick or ...

, unearthed and edited Bomberg's pensées, and was later to publish them, along with images of Bomberg's work, as 'The Bomberg Papers' in his ‘X’ magazine (June 1960). After his early success before the First World War, he was in his lifetime the most brutally excluded artist in Britain. Having lived for years on the earnings of his second wife, fellow artist

and remittances from his sister Kitty, he died in absolute poverty.

Posthumous reception

Thirty years after his death, a major retrospective of Bomberg's work curated by Richard Cork was held at the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

, London, in 1988. In 2006, Abbot Hall Art Gallery in

Kendal Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England, south-east of Windermere and north of Lancaster. Historically in Westmorland, it lies within the dale of t ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. ...

, mounted the first major exhibition of Bomberg's paintings for nearly twenty years: ''David Bomberg: Spirit in the Mass'' (17 July – 28 October 2006). Prior to that, the exhibition ''David Bomberg en Ronda'' at the Museo Joaquin Peinado in Ronda in Andalusia (1–30 October 2004) showed work by Bomberg in the city and environment which he had celebrated in paintings and drawings in 1934-35 and 1954–57. Work from one of the best collections in private hands was shown on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in the exhibition ''In celebration of David Bomberg 1890-1957'' at Daniel Katz Gallery, Old Bond Street, London (30 May – 13 July 2007). London South Bank University, the site of Bomberg's teaching at the former Borough Polytechnic, received a gift of more than 150 paintings and drawings by Bomberg and his students in the Borough Group – principally Dorothy Mead, Cliff Holden,

, and

— the David Bomberg Legacy. The gallery, formally launched on 14 June 2012, to display the artworks donated to the university by Sarah Rose has been made possible by the Heritage Lottery Fund."Borough Road Gallery"
The Public Catalogue Foundation, Retrieved 29 January 2014. The collection is the work of Sarah Rose, who built her collection over thirty years. The London South Bank University Borough Road Gallery will hold two exhibitions a year drawn from the Sarah Rose collection. The

Nasher Museum of Art The Nasher Museum of Art (previously the Duke University Museum of Art) is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The Nasher, along with Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art and Pr ...

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...

held an exhibition entitled ''The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18'' from 30 September 2010 through 2 January 2011.

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

held an exhibition entitled The ''Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World'' between 14 June and 4 September 2011. In the 2011 BBC series, ''British Masters'', Bomberg was singled out as being one of the greatest painters of the 20th Century. He was one of the six artists included in

Dulwich Picture Gallery Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London, which opened to the public in 1817. It was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination. Dulwich is the oldest pub ...

's 2013 summer exhibition, "Nash, Nevinson, Spencer, Gertler, Carrington, Bomberg: A Crisis of Brilliance, 1908-1922". In 2017 the

Pallant House Gallery Pallant House Gallery is an art gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, England. It houses one of the best collections of 20th-century British art in the world. History The Gallery's collection is founded on works left to the city of Chichester by ...

Chichester Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ...

mounted a major exhibition of Bomberg's work curated in partnership with the

Ben Uri Gallery & Museum The Ben Uri Gallery & Museum is a registered museum and charity based at 108a Boundary Road, off Abbey Road in St John's Wood, London, England. It features the work and lives of émigré artists in London, and describes itself as "The Art Museum ...

of St John's Wood,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

References in fiction

In ''Restless'', William Boyd's 2006 novel, there is a reference to a portrait by Bomberg of one of the book's major (fictional) characters. The painting is said to occupy a place in the National Portrait Gallery in London. In ''A Palestine Affair'', a 2003 novel by Jonathan Wilson, the character "Mike Bloomberg" is loosely based on Bomberg's life, as acknowledged by the author: "Richard Cork's 'David Bomberg' as... of inestimable value to me in constructing this fiction". Glyn Hughes's novel, ''Roth'' (Simon & Schuster, London, 1992) – its leading a character a London Jewish painter, its cover carrying a reproduction of one of Bomberg's Cyprus landscapes – is also loosely based on the author's reflections on Bomberg.

References

External links

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14 artworks by David Bomberg
at th
Ben Uri
site
Article on the Whitechapel Boys

Laurie Stewart, ''Notes on the Borough Group of Artists''

Cliff Holden, ''The History of the Borough Group of Artists,'' 2004

Connected, Spring 2009, Journal of alumni of London South Bank University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bomberg, David 1890 births 1957 deaths 20th-century English painters Academics of London South Bank University Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Alumni of the Westminster School of Art Borough Group British Army personnel of World War I British war artists English Jews English male painters English people of Polish-Jewish descent Jewish painters King's Royal Rifle Corps soldiers Painters from London Royal Engineers soldiers Vorticists Whitechapel Boys World War II artists 20th-century English male artists