+ Expand

Description: signed and dated 24

oil on canvas

+ Expand

Dimensions: 51 by 66cm., 20 by 26in.

+ Expand

Provenance: PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF THE LATE DEREK HILL

Piccadilly Gallery, London, whence purchased by Derek Hill, November 1966

+ Expand

Exhibited: Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, loan exhibit, August 1966 (as 'Landscape at Petra').

+ Expand

Published: Richard Cork, David Bomberg, Yale Univeristy Press, New Haven and London, 1987, no.201, illustated p.160 (wherein listed as a lost work).

+ Expand

Notes: Painted in 1924 during a six-month painting expedition to Petra whilst Bomberg was living in Jerusalem. The expedition was encouraged and financed by Bomberg's patron, Sir Ronald Storrs, who believed that Petra's towering grandeur and ancient heritage would inspire Bomberg to reach new artistic heights. Indeed, Bomberg's journals record that he was impressed by Petra to the extent of being overwhelmed, stating that 'It literally crushed me'. He described the Dead Sea landscape as '... a sort of mirage stretching into infinity. In colour, like fire and ashes'. The alien qualities of his surroundings and the danger element involved (necessitating constant armed protection) was certainly enough to reinvigorate Bomberg's work and encourage a marked loosening of his brushwork. Writing in the 1998 Tate Gallery catalogue, Richard Cork suggests that this brief period in Petra is when Bomberg broke free and began to create a style that was entirely his own.