Still life with spring flowers

In 1942, Lilian Bomberg, the artist's wife, encouraged her husband to take up painting still lifes again. She saw a flower stall in Gloucester Road and began to bring him bunches of long-stemmed flowers displaying them prominently in a porcelain bowl. He was gradually encouraged to paint the flowers and the resulting compositions were described as 'vertiable explosions in oil colour' by a contemporary critic (see W. Lipke, David Bomberg, London, 1967, p. 85).

Flowers, 1943 was presented by Lilian Bomberg to the Tate Gallery, London in 1952 (see M. Chamot, D. Farr and M. Butlin, The modern British paintings, drawings and sculpture Artists A-L Volume I, London, 1964, no. 6133).