Lithograph on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Russian Ballet
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/david-bomberg-777" aria-label="More by David Bomberg" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">David Bomberg</a>
ii
Purchased 1970
paper print lithograph
ii
image: 78 × 53 mm
Purchased 1970
<p><b>P07009</b> [from] RUSSIAN BALLET LITHOGRAPHS <i>circa</i> 1914/1919 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-i-p07008" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07008</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-vi-p07013" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07013</span></a>]
<br/>Lithographs.
<br/>Purchased from the d'Offay-Couper Gallery (Gytha Trust) 1970.
<br/>(ii) Not inscribed. Sheet 8⅜×5¼ (21.5×13.5); image 3⅛×2⅛ (8×5.5).
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<br/><i>Exh:</i>
<i>Abstract Art in England 1913–1915</i>, d'Offay-Couper Gallery, November–December 1969 (21, with i, iii and iv repr. in colour).
<br/><i>Lit:</i> William Lipke, <i>David Bomberg</i>, 1967, pp. 114–5, with i, iii and iv repr. pl. II in colour.</p>
<p>Although the date of publication (and doubtless of execution) of these <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/lithography" title="Glossary definition for 'Lithography'"><span>lithographs</span></a> was 1919, they can be dated also to <i>circa</i> 1914 both on stylistic grounds and on the statement of Bomberg's first wife Alice Mayes in 1965 (quoted in Lipke, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 115 note 37) that, to make the lithographs, ‘David took six of the little <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> he had coloured before he went away to the War’. The earlier dating is supported also by Jacob Mendelson (see below).</p>
<p>According to Bomberg himself, as many as twelve such pre-war designs were adapted by him for wider reproduction.</p>
<p>‘...I lithographed in seven printings and printed myself...<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/abstract-art" title="Glossary definition for 'Abstract art'"><span>abstract</span></a> drawings in colour I had done on the inspiration of Ballet. Certain adventurous forms were reproduced, some of them for the new style of textile manufacturing; the remainder together with Blank Verse Poems to collate the dozen designs, were published by Henderson's Book Shop, Charing Cross Road’ (quoted by Lipke, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 50).</p>
<p>The lithographs were published as part of a booklet entitled. <i>Russian Ballet</i>, published in 1919 by Henderson's ‘The Bomb Shop’, 66 Charing Cross Road, London. Lipke (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 114 note 37) records that the money to finance the booklet was provided by Jacob Mendelson, and quotes Alice Mayes (from the same letter cited above):</p>
<p>‘“Russian Ballet” was not a programme, nor even a Souvenir. It was an effort of David's while he was hanging about waiting for the Canadians to decide what they would do about his drawings for the War Memorial, just to keep him happy and relaxed. ... In one of his madcap moods, he and a friend (and I) went among the people in the stalls pretending to be selling programmes at 2/6d a time. Of course Diagileff soon got wind of what was going on and naturally would have none of it, the buyers were re-imbursed and the “programmes” collected and together with David and friend and myself, were chased up into the nine-penny gallery where we belonged. David took his hundred unsold copies to Henderson's Bomb Shop in Charing Cross Road, where they were put out for sale and about ten were sold and then Henderson withdrew them as unsaleable, and they remained in the Bomb Shop until David renewed his acquaintance with Mendelson, who was willing to take the lot off David's hands at a price.’</p>
<p>Jacob Mendelson told the compiler (conversation, 29 July 1970) that he had known Bomberg from 1913, and that the original designs from which the <i>Russian Ballet</i> lithographs were developed were executed around 1914. He himself had formerly owned several of the original designs which were now lost. Bomberg had already sought unsuccessfully to get financial backing for his project to publish the lithographs, when Mendelson contributed £30 to help its realisation. The project was not a financial success, and Mendelson was unable to sell the stock of copies of the booklet (which he had retained for over forty years) until in the early 1960s he began to sell them intermittently, only then to have the majority of his copies destroyed in a fire.</p>
<p>Mrs Lilian Bomberg owns several of the original group of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/gouache" title="Glossary definition for 'Gouache'"><span>gouaches</span></a> of which six were chosen as the basis of the present lithographs. Mrs Bomberg's gouaches include the originals of (iii) <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-iii-p07010" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07010</span></a>
<br/>and (vi) <span>P07013</span>, which are the same size as the lithographs, differing only in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/medium" title="Glossary definition for 'Medium'"><span>medium</span></a> and (slightly) in colour value, and what appears to be a study for (ii) <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-ii-p07009" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07009</span></a>. Mrs Bomberg also owns several state proofs of (i) <span>P07008</span> and (iii) <span>P07010</span>.</p>
<p>In the booklet, the text, consisting of a short poem by Bomberg himself, is interspersed, with very generous spacing, with the lithographs. Each lithograph faces a fragment of text on the opposite page, in the following sequence:</p>
<p>(i) <span>P07008</span>; ‘Methodic discord startles...’</p>
<p>(ii) <span>P07009</span>; ‘Insistent snatchings drag fancy from space’</p>
<p>(iii) <span>P07010</span>; ‘Fluttering white hands beat—compel. Reason concedes’</p>
<p>(iv) <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-iv-p07011" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07011</span></a>; ‘Impressions crowding collide with movement round us’</p>
<p>(v) <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bomberg-v-p07012" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P07012</span></a>; ‘—the curtain falls—the created illusion escapes’</p>
<p>(vi) <span>P07013</span>; ‘The mind clamped fast captures only a fragment, for new illusion’.</p>
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<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/><i>The Tate Gallery 1968-70</i>, London 1970
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Catalogue entry
2004-10-11T00:00:00
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