verso: pen and ink study of the same subject

Provenance: ex collection of the artist's family

After the war, Bomberg returned to the earlier studies made when he visited the Russian Ballet in London between 1914 and 1919. This was a subject matter attractive to him as it was far removed from the terrifying war he had just experienced. He re-worked his drawings and produced a book of six lithographs for which he wrote his own text. Published by Hendersons, the Bomb Shop in Cecil Court, London, it was intended as an edition of 100 though probably far fewer were made.

His biographer Richard Cork explains, "The sight of these small prewar drawings, executed with all the young Bomberg's precocious certainty and verve, temporarily persuaded him that his old geometrical style might still be viable. . .The panache of the six final lithographs proves how exhilarated he felt. . .They allow chinks of light to blaze out of the surrounding darkness with startling brilliance, or else push an abruptly chopped limb up against the surface of the design like a dancer's body thrusting brazenly at the spectator's face."

This study was not published as a lithograph.

Exhibited: Fischer Fine Art, London; Gillian Jason, London, David Bomberg Centenary, 1990

Literature: Richard Cork, David Bomberg, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987; p. 122-126; William Lipke, David Bomberg, Evelyn, Adams & Mackay, London 1967, p. 48-49,