Study for 'Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company'

Details

David Bomberg (1890-1957)
Study for 'Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company'
pencil and ink on tracing paper, squared for transfer
12 5/8 x 9 7/8 in (32.2 x 25.7 cm)
Executed circa 1918.

Provenance

A gift from Lilian Bomberg to the present owner in 1974.

Literature

R. Cork, David Bomberg, New Haven and London, 1987, p. 117, no. 142, illustrated.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The present work is a study for the paintings that were commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Commission. There are two finished oil paintings, dating circa 1918-19, one is in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London and the other in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa.

As in the paintings, the drawing commemorates an incident in the First World War, where a company of Canadian soldiers dug tunnels under the German trenches to lay explosives, as part of the preparations for a surprise assault on the enemy defences at Ypres. Bomberg's work was criticised at the time as a ‘Futurist abortion’, although Bomberg had compromised the radical abstraction of his earlier Vorticist work for a more figurative, representational style.

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