Moonlight; The Hospital of the Knights of St. John, Bethlehem Road, Jerusalem

Bomberg went to Jerusalem in April 1923, on the suggestion of Muirhead Bone who believed that he could persuade Leo Stein, the London Director of the Zionist Organization, to take him on as their official artist in Palestine. Bone arranged free passage for Bomberg and his wife Alice who sailed to Jaffa and then took a bus to Jerusalem. Bomberg, who had never been further than Switzerland before was overwhelmed by Jerusalem, finding it 'a Russian toy city, punctuated by its red roofs, jewelled with the gildings of the Mosque spire - set against the hills - patterned with walls encircling the Christian holy places - the horizontal lines accentuated by the perpendicular forms of the minarets'.

Bomberg kept a studio above the roof-tops which allowed him to paint panoramic views of the city, and he soon became fascinated with the idea of painting by the light of the moon. As William Lipke (David Bomberg, London, 1967, p.56) comments: 'Some of his finest pictures - during this and later periods of his lifetime - were painted when the moon was full, shedding a softer light on his subject, creating an entirely different feeling of mass. During the harsher moments of the day the Mediterranean sun tended to dissect a subject into so many hard-shaped objects; but by moonlight objects blended more smoothly. hues were less distinct'.

On his return to England pictures from Jerusalem and Petra were show at the Leicester Galleries in February 1928.