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Lot Essay
Bomberg’s fruitful obsession with experimental dance, which led him to produce a series of lithographs called Russian Ballet in 1919, began several years earlier. An outstanding group of near-abstract watercolours, mixed with crayon and gouache, derived their inspiration from his eager involvement with adventurous young dancing women between 1913 and the following year. One of them, Sonia Cohen, went down to the sea at Southborne and joined ‘a summer school dancing out-of-doors on the cliffs with Margaret Morris.’ She devised a radical system of movement notation, and Cohen later recalled that Bomberg, who was ‘in love with me at the time’, followed her down there ‘and thought it a great lark to watch us all cavorting around at this open-air camp.’
In 1914, after the penniless Bomberg moved into ‘a home for young artists’ at Ormonde Terrace near Regents Park, he grew fascinated by Maria Wajda. She was a Russian ballet dancer who frequented the lively gatherings at Ormonde Terrace, and her experimental performances there aroused Bomberg’s enthusiasm once more. He produced some of the Dancer images in his Ormonde Terrace room, and became fascinated when Alice Mayes visited the house. She would soon become Bomberg’s first wife, and at an Ormonde Terrace Christmas party Alice was invited to ‘give a demonstration of Russian dance steps which I had been learning while working with Kosslov’s Ballet Company – standing in for Diaghilev’s Company, who were kept abroad owing to war conditions. After I had done my “little steps”, I was naturally roped in to handle the coffee and sandwiches, and so I met the young Bomberg.’ Their mutual enthusiasm for the Russian Ballet and radical dance in general must have contributed greatly to the love they soon felt for each other.
Several other outstanding artists in the Vorticist circle shared this fascination with dance, among them Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts. In the second issue of BLAST magazine, the Vorticists’ publication, Ezra Pound approvingly quoted Lawrence Binyon who wrote in The Flight of the Dragon: ‘Every statue, every picture, is a series of ordered relations, controlled, as the body is controlled, in the dance, by the will to express a single idea.’ Bomberg would surely have agreed with Binyon’s statement, and several figures can be seen conveying their ecstatic response to awakening from death in his major 1912 painting Vision of Ezekiel, now owned by Tate. But by the time Bomberg executed the Dancer watercolours, he had pushed his art far nearer to abstraction. They are very audacious, and the work now at Christie’s is outstanding. Festive red plays an important role in its colour-scheme, emphasizing the vitality of agile limbs. They are still hinted at, along with a spectacular costume and other bodily fragments like breasts and buttocks. Seen in their entirety, these joyfully orchestrated forms suggest the role played by music as well. Bomberg was still very young when he created the strong sense of movement in The Dancer, and it exudes an astonishing amount of energy, daring and ambition.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Richard Cork for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
In 1914, after the penniless Bomberg moved into ‘a home for young artists’ at Ormonde Terrace near Regents Park, he grew fascinated by Maria Wajda. She was a Russian ballet dancer who frequented the lively gatherings at Ormonde Terrace, and her experimental performances there aroused Bomberg’s enthusiasm once more. He produced some of the Dancer images in his Ormonde Terrace room, and became fascinated when Alice Mayes visited the house. She would soon become Bomberg’s first wife, and at an Ormonde Terrace Christmas party Alice was invited to ‘give a demonstration of Russian dance steps which I had been learning while working with Kosslov’s Ballet Company – standing in for Diaghilev’s Company, who were kept abroad owing to war conditions. After I had done my “little steps”, I was naturally roped in to handle the coffee and sandwiches, and so I met the young Bomberg.’ Their mutual enthusiasm for the Russian Ballet and radical dance in general must have contributed greatly to the love they soon felt for each other.
Several other outstanding artists in the Vorticist circle shared this fascination with dance, among them Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts. In the second issue of BLAST magazine, the Vorticists’ publication, Ezra Pound approvingly quoted Lawrence Binyon who wrote in The Flight of the Dragon: ‘Every statue, every picture, is a series of ordered relations, controlled, as the body is controlled, in the dance, by the will to express a single idea.’ Bomberg would surely have agreed with Binyon’s statement, and several figures can be seen conveying their ecstatic response to awakening from death in his major 1912 painting Vision of Ezekiel, now owned by Tate. But by the time Bomberg executed the Dancer watercolours, he had pushed his art far nearer to abstraction. They are very audacious, and the work now at Christie’s is outstanding. Festive red plays an important role in its colour-scheme, emphasizing the vitality of agile limbs. They are still hinted at, along with a spectacular costume and other bodily fragments like breasts and buttocks. Seen in their entirety, these joyfully orchestrated forms suggest the role played by music as well. Bomberg was still very young when he created the strong sense of movement in The Dancer, and it exudes an astonishing amount of energy, daring and ambition.
Richard Cork
We are very grateful to Richard Cork for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.