Still Life with Spring Flowers, 1943
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated 'Bomberg 43' lower left
76.0 x 67.0 cm (30 x 26½ inches)

Notes:
This vibrant canvas was produced while Bomberg and his wife, Lillian, were living at Queen's Gate Mews in Kensington. Like other wartime paintings, Still Life with Spring Flowers can be read as a personal response to the pressures of living in London during the Blitz. Bomberg was rejected by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee and also when he applied for over 300 teaching posts in an attempt to find work that would allow him to continue painting. In an effort to alleviate her husband's resulting black moods, Lillian used her housekeeping money to buy him flowers at Gloucester Road tube station. Despite his initial apprehension, Bomberg soon became enthusiastic and would visit Covent Garden daily to purchase new 'subjects', which, according to Lillian, 'he placed in the same vase, against the same curtain', caring little for the arrangement.

The bold brushstrokes and erratic technique in this and other flower canvases have been viewed as a response to the turmoil of the period. Still Life with Spring Flowers is also quite abstract in areas, considerably more so than the 1943 Flowers presented by Lillian to the Tate in 1952. In this respect, as well as reflecting on the war, the painting's explosive energy recalls the dynamism of Bomberg's early Vorticist work.
POA