Family Bereavement

Executed in 1913, David Bomberg’s Family Bereavement is a profoundly intimate and intense consideration of the subject of mourning. The present work would certainly have held a particular significance for Bomberg as his mother, Rebecca, had passed away in the autumn of 1912. Bomberg shared a close and important relationship with his mother who was a steadfast source of support during the commencing stages of his career. Rebecca helped her son to buy artistic supplies and was instrumental in enabling him to set up his own studio adjacent to the family home in London. Consequently, Family Bereavement is a work bound to the life and closest relationships of its artist, lending it a deeply personal resonance.

Family Bereavement was created when Bomberg was still studying at the Slade School between the years 1911 and 1913. He studied there with other iconic British artists such as Stanley Spencer and Ben Nicholson, forming part of the cohort that made up the second and last ‘crisis of brilliance’ that overwhelmed the world-renowned art school. The present work, conceived in the same year that Bomberg won the Henry Tonks prize for his captivating realism, is immediately redolent of the artist’s academic training as a technical draughtsman. The work is formed of a confident linearity, its angular shapes reminiscent of an architect’s drawing board. Bomberg himself stressed the importance of his technical training: ‘Good judgement is through good drawing – from the nervous system to the sensory of the brain it is the combination of eurythmics, euphony and poetry, and when the good draughtsman draws, the muses come to dance (D. Bomberg, "The Bomberg Papers", An Anthology from X , Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 90).

Family Bereavement belongs to a series of four versions of the same subject and signifies how Bomberg was experimenting with different styles, beginning to move away from the traditional and, at times, restrictive methods of the Slade School. One of the four currently resides in the Tate Collection under the same title as the present work. The Tate’s version, however, was conceived in a more realist style, whilst the current lot demonstrates Bomberg’s preoccupation with intense abstraction. In 1913, Bomberg travelled to Paris where he encountered modernists such as Derain, Modigliani and Picasso. As such, he became interested in cubist compositions and, specifically, the abstraction of the human form. In the present work, the realist elements of the Tate version have been simplified and geometrised, revealing Bomberg’s concern with ‘stripping all irrelevant matter.’ (D. Bomberg, "The Bomberg Papers", ed. Patrick Swift, X: A Quarterly Review, Vol 1, No 3, June 1960). The artist has interspersed more two-dimensional shapes amongst globular block-like forms, creating a dual sense of depth and dislocation that speaks powerfully to the theme of the work.

Equally, as in much of Bomberg’s early work, Family Bereavement is evocative of the artist’s Jewish heritage. Bomberg frequently visited the Pavilion Theatre in the East End of London which staged Yiddish dramas. Inspired by these performances, Bomberg created numerous works on paper that presented the dramatic posturing of the actors. The present work is imbued with the same concept of dramatism; the abstract figures gesture in an almost theatrical manner. The two women at the centre of the work dominate the picture plane with one of the women outstretching her arm dramatically as if to halt the entrance of Death itself. The entire composition is even framed within the three-dimensional perspective of an archway, which lends the work its striking depth and gives the impression that the figures are located on a stage. Bomberg emphasises his Jewish upbringing further with the form on the far left of the work, which can be recognised as a Yahrzeit candle; a traditional Jewish candle lit in memory of the dead. Bomberg has even placed himself within the work; the figure on the far right has often been identified as the artist’s counterpart. In fact, Bomberg’s stepdaughter stated that he always kept a version of Family Bereavement on his easel, further demonstrating the work’s personal significance.

Despite the present work’s intimate rendering of the specificity of Bomberg’s religious heritage, it is nonetheless permeated with a deep sense of timelessness. In this vein, Family Bereavement indicates Bomberg’s singular ability to fuse his experimental ideas with more enduring and ubiquitous themes. Indeed, the subject matter of the present work resonates on a profoundly universal level. Bomberg has also incorporated more traditional imagery within Family Bereavement, establishing what has become known as the unique paradox of his early works. He has not only paid homage to his Jewish upbringing, but we can perhaps discern references to an art historical past within the present work. This is most evident when studying the figure lying down on the bed, its abstracted arms are clasped together as if in prayer. When observing the reclining figure closely, it becomes immediately reminiscent of recumbent medieval tomb effigies. The figure indicates how Bomberg was able to embrace the past and its imagery in order to move forward to more avant-garde practices. As such, Family Bereavement conveys a distinctively antithetical relationship between style and subject matter. This is a relationship that was typical of Bomberg’s early career, rendering his early works all the more powerful as they privilege modernist abstraction whilst speaking to a strong and vivid sense of reality. In this light, Family Bereavement presents the unique style that placed Bomberg at the forefront of the English avant-garde in the period immediately before the First World War.

‘Drawing demands freedom, freedom demands liberty to expand in space – this is progress. By the extension of democracy – good draughtsmanship is – Democracy’s visual sign. To draw with integrity replaces bad habits with good, youth preserved from corruption. The hand works at high tension and organises as it simplifies, reducing to barest essentials, stripping all irrelevant matter obstructing the rapidly forming organisation which reveals the design. This is drawing.’

(David Bomberg in, "The Bomberg Papers", ed. Patrick Swift, X: A Quarterly Review, Vol 1, No 3, June 1960)