.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This portrait of Mark Gertler has similarities to Bomberg’s portraits of his other Slade contemporaries: his prizewinning portrait Head of a Poet (Isaac Rosenberg), 1913 and another called Head of a Young Woman, circa 1911, which is probably of their Slade contemporary Clare Winsten (née Clara Birnberg), and is likely to have been executed during the Slade period. It has in common with these other drawings the broadening of the lower part of the face and the angle looking slightly up at the sitter. The careful delineation of the features with a bolder dark outline to the cheeks and the soft shading at the neck is also typical of Slade drawing in this period.
This drawing was discovered among a collection of 40 works by Dorothy Brett, Bomberg and Gertler's contemporary at the Slade. They were watercolours, pencil and chalk studies and an oil sketch of a self-portrait and other figures at Garsington. Brett is present in the famous Slade picnic photograph of 1912 which also includes Bomberg, Gertler and Rosenberg. She was very fond of Gertler, recalling him in this period as ‘high-spirited, clever … a wild lovely boy, and a fine artist’, so it would not be a surprise to find this drawing among her things.
We are very grateful to Sarah MacDougall and Richard Cork for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
This drawing was discovered among a collection of 40 works by Dorothy Brett, Bomberg and Gertler's contemporary at the Slade. They were watercolours, pencil and chalk studies and an oil sketch of a self-portrait and other figures at Garsington. Brett is present in the famous Slade picnic photograph of 1912 which also includes Bomberg, Gertler and Rosenberg. She was very fond of Gertler, recalling him in this period as ‘high-spirited, clever … a wild lovely boy, and a fine artist’, so it would not be a surprise to find this drawing among her things.
We are very grateful to Sarah MacDougall and Richard Cork for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.