Bargee Man (recto); Portrait of Leo Koenig by Lilian Bomberg (verso)

Details

David Bomberg (1890-1957)
Bargee Man (recto); Portrait of Leo Koenig by Lilian Bomberg (verso)
signed, inscribed and dated by Lilian Bomberg 'Ink pencil drawing is of Leo Koenig/Jewish writer/Lilian J.G. Bomberg./14th October 1962.' (lower left, verso) 'Overleaf/watercolour by my late husband./David Bomberg./This painting is of the Bargee period 1919-1921/"Bargee Man." Lilian J.G. Bomberg 14th Oct 1962' (lower right, verso)
pencil, watercolour, gouache, and ink
13¾ x 20 in. (35 x 50.7 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 6 November 1998, lot 158, where purchased by the present owner.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

The idea for a barge series came to Bomberg on a cycling trip with Alice, his first wife, one afternoon in the summer of 1919. They encountered a line of four or five barges lined up for the night with willow trees throwing shadows over the riverbank. Alice later recalled that Bomberg 'literally fell off his bike ... I suppose we were there for nearly an hour while he made his sketch and then we rode home, and he spent some time brooding over the drawing he had made on the back of an envelope'. A series of watercolours depicting the barge families, or 'bargees', ensued in which Bomberg began to explore the theme of the outsider, as he believed that the bargees, like himself, occupied only a marginal place in society.
(see R. Cork, David Bomberg, London, 1987, p.134).

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