Sunlight and Flowers

The Second World War marked an extremely gruelling period for David Bomberg and his wife Lilian, whom he married in 1941. Aside from enduring life in London during the traumatic years of the Blitz, the Bombergs lived a life of perpetual anxiety, worried for their economic survival. Bomberg was finding it increasingly difficult to sell his work, let alone find employment, and had been rejected by the War Artists Committee for his request to paint a Memorial Panel based on an underground bomb store. To lift Bomberg’s spirits Lilian bought flowers from a stall outside Gloucester Road station and brought them back to their home in Queens Gate Mews for her husband to paint them. Drawn to their vivid colours and blossoming buds, Bomberg soon became immersed in the task, creating a series of works based on this theme. Created during the 1940s, these still-lifes are amongst Bomberg’s most celebrated subject matter, feted for their rich impasto and vivacious brushwork. The present lot is one of the finest examples of the flower paintings he did in this period, the scumbled treatment of the canvas surface bringing a vivacity and tactility to his work.