The Dee, Cairngorms

Bomberg and his companion, the painter Lilian Holt, embarked on a six week painting trip to Derbyshire and Scotland in February and March 1932. First they visited Lilian's brother in Perth, moving on to Pitlochry and the Grampians, then the Caingorms. They lived in a tent and were plagued by wet and stormy weather throughout, prompting a headline in the Daily Express on 9 November: 'Artist who lives dangerously', with a photograph of Bomberg surrounded by canvases from the Scottish expedition and the caption: 'he takes risk when he seeks his subjects. He established a tent studio on the chill, raw heights of the Scottish Cairngorms, where no one had ever lived before' (see R. Cork, David Bomberg, New Haven and London, 1987, p. 194).