David Bomberg 1890-1957
18 14/16 x 24 9/16 ins
In Spring 1953 Bomberg and his wife Lilian travelled to France to draw several of its cathedrals including Notre Dame and Chartres. These drawings vary from those in which there is wealth of architectural detail including portals, windows and buttresses
to others such as the present work which are altogether more mysterious and atmospheric. In Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris it is as though the artist has taken the cathedral apart, only to rebuild it again, stripping it of all but its most essential structural components. The heavy bulk of the cathedral is reduced to a light skeleton and the building glimmers to life from out of the twilight, yet the result still possesses an imposing grandeur.
1. David Bomberg, catalogue introduction for Exhibition of the Borough Bottega, Berkeley Galleries, London, November-December 1953
Provenance
Artist's Estate (probate no. 67)Dinora Davies-Rees