
Not on display
- Artist
- David Bomberg 1890–1957
- Medium
- Charcoal on paper
- Dimensions
- Frame: 744 × 857 × 30 mm
image: 548 × 654 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1967
- Reference
- T00914
Display caption
This study and its related painting demonstrate Bomberg's search for a purely visual language with which to express his perceptions of the urban environment. They show his precocious understanding of Cubism and Futurism, and of the artists who later became known as Vorticists. The subject was based on a scene of dockers working in the hold of a steel ship. A ladder, seen in the lower right of the picture, connects the hold with the deck above. The drawing is divided into sixty-four squares and a diagonal grid which produces a cross in each square. This geometrical framework, repeated in the final painting, dissolves the subject of the picture into dynamic angular facets.
Gallery label, September 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Catalogue entry
David Bomberg 1890–1957
T00914 Study for ‘In the Hold’ (No. T00913) c.1913
Inscribed ‘Bomberg’ b. r.
Black chalk on paper, 21 ¿ x 26 (55.5 x 66).
Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1967.
Coll: Purchased by the Friends from the artist’s widow through Marlborough Fine Art Ltd. 1967.
Exh: Marlborough Fine Art, March 1967 (64, withdrawn during the exhibition and shown in the Arts Council Retrospective Exhibition, Tate Gallery, March–April 1967, and tour, not numbered).
Lit: Ronald Alley, ‘David Bomberg’s “In the Hold”, 1913–14’, in Burlington Magazine, CX, 1968, p. 216, repr. p. 217, pi. 74.
This drawing is both squared up and has a diagonal grid; both grids are repeated complete in the finished painting, T00913.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1967–1968, London 1968.
You might like
-
David Bomberg iii
c.1914–19 -
David Bomberg iv
c.1914–19 -
David Bomberg vi
c.1914–19 -
Sir Jacob Epstein Study for ‘The Rock Drill’
c.1913 -
David Bomberg Ju-Jitsu
c.1913 -
David Bomberg The Mud Bath
1914 -
David Bomberg In the Hold
c.1913–14 -
David Bomberg Bathing Scene
c.1912–13 -
David Bomberg Study for ‘Vision of Ezekiel’
c.1912 -
David Bomberg Sketches for ‘The Dancer’
c.1913–14 -
David Bomberg Imaginative Composition - ‘The Tent’
c.1920–3 -
David Bomberg Study for Two Figures in a Composition
c.1919–20 -
David Bomberg Study for a Figure in a Composition
c.1919–21 -
David Bomberg The City on the Rock, Evening, Ronda, Spain
1935 -
David Bomberg Picos de Europa, Asturias, Spain
1935