Summer flowers

In 1942 and 1943, Bomberg returned to the subject of flower paintings that he had worked on briefly in 1937. Lilian, Bomberg's wife, would bring home large bouquets of stem flowers from a flower stall in Gloucester Road. 'Described as "veritable explosions in oil colour" by one critic reviewing a Bomberg show later that year, these flower paintings were large, rich bouquets of impasted paint that started with long-stemmed flowers in a vase and ended in a resonating portrayal of exotic and vivacious brushwork such as found in Summer Flowers, 1943 [the present work] ... Seeing the flowers as essentially sculptural, Bomberg has given a tactile impression of them by the very scumbled treatment of the canvas surface' (W. Lipke, op. cit., p. 85).