David Bomberg,
British 1890-1957 -

Portrait of Lillian, 1937;

oil on board, 60 x 51 cm (ARR)

Provenance: Christies London 21 November 2013 lot 137, where purchased by the present owner (this lot originally also had a portrait of the artist on the reverse)

Exhibited: Boundary Gallery, London

Note: David Bomberg was a British painter and member of the Whitechapel Boys. He studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and alongside artists such as Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson, and Paul Nash. He was awarded the Slade Prize for drawing in 1913, after which he travelled to France, meeting contemporaries such as Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. In 1914 he co-curated an exhibition with Jacob Epstein, in which his works were shown alongside those of Modigliani, Kisling, and other prominent Jewish artists living in France. His first solo exhibition was held at the Chenil Gallery in 1914, where visitors included Augustus John, Marinetti, Duchamp and Brancusi. Bombergs work has been the subject of a number of solo exhibitions, including at the Israel Museum in 1983, at the Tate in 1988, and at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1979 when under the directorship of Nicholas Serota. His works are currently held at MoMA in New York, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Tate in London and National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

This work is particularly noteworthy as a highly personal piece, depicting the artists wife Lillian Bomberg, also known by her maiden name of Holt. Holt was herself a successful artist, and was, along with her husband, a founding member of the Borough Group. This piece is one of a number of portraits which Bomberg painted of his wife, completed almost ten years after their marriage in 1929. Holts abstracted gaze and slight smile captures a sense of the comfortable intimacy between artist and sitter as husband and wife. This work is a great example of Bombergs later style, especially in its freely and confidently applied brushstrokes, using his typical earthy colour palette of dark reds, browns and orange.