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Lot Essay
By the time Bomberg painted Figure Study (Racehorse) on a panel of wood, he was approaching the end of his student period at the Slade School of Art in London. Ever since he had entered this major institution in April 1911, with crucial support from the Jewish Education Aid Society, Bomberg had increasingly questioned and fought against the stern tutelage offered at the Slade by Henry Tonks. Figure Study (Racehorse) may well be based on the subject of a male model seated astride a drawing ‘horse’ in a ‘life-room’ session. But by the time he had finished this painting, it conveyed the energy of a rider, like the vigorous men he drew in an elaborate charcoal called Racehorses.
Very bravely, Bomberg rebelled against the academic classes at the Slade, which taught students how to draw by undergoing a very ‘proper’ and gruelling programme of study with classical statues and live models posed for the purpose. Bomberg, like some of his fellow-students who included C.R.W.Nevinson, William Roberts, Stanley Spencer and Edward Wadsworth, became increasingly restless. After all, Bomberg had been fascinated by Roger Fry’s seminal and revolutionary survey of Manet and the Post-Impressionists, exhibited at the Grafton Galleries in 1910. The work shown there by artists like Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin made the most adventurous Slade students impatient with Tonks and his academic principles. The young Bomberg probably learned a great deal about the structure of the human body when he drew in the ‘life-room’, but after leaving the Slade in 1913 he decided that the results were not worth preserving. Alice Mayes, his first wife, later recalled how in 1915 ‘many evenings were spent going through his old “Slade” drawings and the grate every night was filled with old drawings which, after thoroughly studying, he decided to discard.’ Alice described how Bomberg said, ‘in his Jewish way he had of summing up a situation, “There – in flames, goes three years’ work of sitting on a low donkey stool from ten to four drawing worm’s eye views of the nude.”’
The destruction of all those Bomberg drawings can only be deplored, but his Figure Study (Racehorse) painting shows just how rebellious he had grown by the time he left the Slade. Professor Fred Brown, who taught alongside Henry Tonks and shared his fascination with anatomical ‘structure, the laws of optics’, became increasingly hostile towards young Bomberg’s radical departure from the academic norm. Tonks had earlier been a Demonstrator in Anatomy at the London Hospital Medical School, and Brown even sternly insisted that ‘art should be taught on a basis of science.’ But when Brown denounced one of the rebellious paintings his student had produced, Bomberg was so angered by this professorial comment that he suddenly became very angry and ‘brought his palette down on Professor Brown’s head.’
The contrast between Bomberg and Brown is amusingly evident in a famous photograph of the Slade’s summer picnic. They are actually standing next to each other, and the Professor’s very proper and respectable clothes could hardly be more different from Bomberg’s relaxed, rough-and-ready shirt and trousers. Around then, London was invaded by two heretical exhibitions – one held by the belligerent Italian Futurists, and the other including Cubism, avant-garde Russians and Matisse. Many older artists were astounded and outraged, but these unashamedly modernist shows convinced a lot of younger viewers that contemporary art in England should be transformed without delay. At the Slade, Professor Tonks felt so horrified by paintings like Bomberg’s Figure Study (Racehorse) that he tried to dissuade his students from visiting these renegade exhibitions. But they refused to heed his narrow-minded advice, and he confessed to a friend that ‘I cannot teach what I don’t believe in. I shall resign if this talk about Cubism doesn’t cease; it is killing me.’
Although Bomberg never lost his immense love of certain paintings in the National Gallery, by masters including Botticelli, Michelangelo and El Greco, he pushed his own art to ever more courageous extremes. Figure Study (Racehorse) is an arresting example of how far he was prepared to go. Although the figure on his ‘horse’ may well derive from a model posing in a Slade life-class session, everything in this radical painting has been boldly reduced to a minimal extreme. The angular forms on the left are mysterious, possibly referring to an architectural structure. White, black and blue, they chime in colour with the ‘horse’ who appears to be galloping off. Its structure is given a powerful amount of vitality by Bomberg, who may well have wanted viewers to see it as a race-horse striding through space. Hence the gesticulating arms of the rider himself, whose arms are seemingly caught up in encouraging this sense of incipient movement. Painted in warm colours, he almost seems to be merging with the space behind. But this gesticulating young man retains his own singular vivacity, just as Bomberg courageously withstood academic disapproval and rode on, exploring a bold and inventive world of his own.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Richard Cork for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Very bravely, Bomberg rebelled against the academic classes at the Slade, which taught students how to draw by undergoing a very ‘proper’ and gruelling programme of study with classical statues and live models posed for the purpose. Bomberg, like some of his fellow-students who included C.R.W.Nevinson, William Roberts, Stanley Spencer and Edward Wadsworth, became increasingly restless. After all, Bomberg had been fascinated by Roger Fry’s seminal and revolutionary survey of Manet and the Post-Impressionists, exhibited at the Grafton Galleries in 1910. The work shown there by artists like Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin made the most adventurous Slade students impatient with Tonks and his academic principles. The young Bomberg probably learned a great deal about the structure of the human body when he drew in the ‘life-room’, but after leaving the Slade in 1913 he decided that the results were not worth preserving. Alice Mayes, his first wife, later recalled how in 1915 ‘many evenings were spent going through his old “Slade” drawings and the grate every night was filled with old drawings which, after thoroughly studying, he decided to discard.’ Alice described how Bomberg said, ‘in his Jewish way he had of summing up a situation, “There – in flames, goes three years’ work of sitting on a low donkey stool from ten to four drawing worm’s eye views of the nude.”’
The destruction of all those Bomberg drawings can only be deplored, but his Figure Study (Racehorse) painting shows just how rebellious he had grown by the time he left the Slade. Professor Fred Brown, who taught alongside Henry Tonks and shared his fascination with anatomical ‘structure, the laws of optics’, became increasingly hostile towards young Bomberg’s radical departure from the academic norm. Tonks had earlier been a Demonstrator in Anatomy at the London Hospital Medical School, and Brown even sternly insisted that ‘art should be taught on a basis of science.’ But when Brown denounced one of the rebellious paintings his student had produced, Bomberg was so angered by this professorial comment that he suddenly became very angry and ‘brought his palette down on Professor Brown’s head.’
The contrast between Bomberg and Brown is amusingly evident in a famous photograph of the Slade’s summer picnic. They are actually standing next to each other, and the Professor’s very proper and respectable clothes could hardly be more different from Bomberg’s relaxed, rough-and-ready shirt and trousers. Around then, London was invaded by two heretical exhibitions – one held by the belligerent Italian Futurists, and the other including Cubism, avant-garde Russians and Matisse. Many older artists were astounded and outraged, but these unashamedly modernist shows convinced a lot of younger viewers that contemporary art in England should be transformed without delay. At the Slade, Professor Tonks felt so horrified by paintings like Bomberg’s Figure Study (Racehorse) that he tried to dissuade his students from visiting these renegade exhibitions. But they refused to heed his narrow-minded advice, and he confessed to a friend that ‘I cannot teach what I don’t believe in. I shall resign if this talk about Cubism doesn’t cease; it is killing me.’
Although Bomberg never lost his immense love of certain paintings in the National Gallery, by masters including Botticelli, Michelangelo and El Greco, he pushed his own art to ever more courageous extremes. Figure Study (Racehorse) is an arresting example of how far he was prepared to go. Although the figure on his ‘horse’ may well derive from a model posing in a Slade life-class session, everything in this radical painting has been boldly reduced to a minimal extreme. The angular forms on the left are mysterious, possibly referring to an architectural structure. White, black and blue, they chime in colour with the ‘horse’ who appears to be galloping off. Its structure is given a powerful amount of vitality by Bomberg, who may well have wanted viewers to see it as a race-horse striding through space. Hence the gesticulating arms of the rider himself, whose arms are seemingly caught up in encouraging this sense of incipient movement. Painted in warm colours, he almost seems to be merging with the space behind. But this gesticulating young man retains his own singular vivacity, just as Bomberg courageously withstood academic disapproval and rode on, exploring a bold and inventive world of his own.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Richard Cork for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.