David Bomberg

Barges

1919

On loan

Ben Uri Gallery (London, UK): David Bomberg (1890-1957): A Retrospective

Artist: David Bomberg 1890–1957
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 597 x 775 mm
frame: 760 x 945 x 77 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1963
Reference: T00610

Catalogue entry

T00610 BARGES 1919

Inscr. ‘Bomberg 19’ b.r.
Canvas, 23 7/8×30 1/2 (59·5×77·5).
Purchased from the Piccadilly Gallery (Grant-in-Aid) 1963.
Coll: J. L. Behrend, purchased at the London Group, 1919; given to his daughter, Mrs E. Brook-Jones, 1941; sold Christie's, 10 March 1961 (96), as the property of J. L. Behrend, bought Piccadilly Gallery.
Exh: London Group, November 1919 (31); Arts Council, September–October 1958, and provincial tour (2), as ‘Barges on the Canal’; Summer Exhibition, Redfern Gallery, June–September 1963 (32); Paintings of Inland Waterways, Piccadilly Gallery, August–September 1963 (I), as ‘Moored Barges’, wrongly dated 1921.

A sketch for T00610 was exhibited at the London Group in 1919 (74) and a gouache version dated 1921 was in the Piccadilly Gallery exhibition, 1963 (2). Mrs Bomberg informed the compiler that the artist had painted a number of pictures of canals and barges between 1919 and 1921 and that T00610 probably represents the Regent's Canal. Bomberg was living in Hampstead at that time. He had painted an earlier series of barges at Rotherhithe and Wapping before the 1914–18 war and a series at Teddington in 1920. (Letter of 19 October 1963 and conversations.)

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I