David Bomberg
At the Window, 1919
Oil on canvas
Postwar Bomberg reworked his earlier bedroom interior to reflect his own state of mind, ruthlessly excising any needless detail and employing a bold, modernist palette. Although dressed, as before top-to-toe in black, Raie’s outfit is now suggestive of mourning. Dominated by strong verticals, the perspective has narrowed: the window panes have become prison bars and the possibility of life beyond the room has been closed off by the deliberate curtailing of the view and the imposition of a blind. The shutters have literally come down.
