Study for 'Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company'

The present work is a study for the paintings that were commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Commission. There are two finished oil paintings, dating circa 1918-19, one is in the collection of the Tate Gallery, London and the other in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa.

As in the paintings, the drawing commemorates an incident in the First World War, where a company of Canadian soldiers dug tunnels under the German trenches to lay explosives, as part of the preparations for a surprise assault on the enemy defences at Ypres. Bomberg's work was criticised at the time as a ‘Futurist abortion’, although Bomberg had compromised the radical abstraction of his earlier Vorticist work for a more figurative, representational style.