David Bomberg
Woman Looking through Window (aka Bedroom Picture), c.1911-12
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Bomberg’s earliest known painting reworks a popular motif - a young woman at the window, lit by a dramatic single light source - particularly favoured by the Anglo-Jewish painter William Rothenstein. Bomberg however consciously invokes the Camden Town Group tradition headed by his former tutor Walter Sickert, focusing on a mundane working-class interior with an urban landscape glimpsed beyond the open window. Bomberg’s sister Raie modelled for the picture, which is probably set within the family home in Tenter Buildings, Whitechapel with Bomberg’s studio just visible through the open doorway.
