Bomberg exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery

Having become a Friend of PHG, I make sure I don't miss out on any of their exhibitions. the Bomberg is the main one at the moment, and runs until 4 February. It marks the 60th anniversary of his death and is described as a

'A major review of the life and career of David Bomberg (1890 – 1957), revered as one of the greatest British artists of the 20th century. Taught by Walter Sickert and part of the Slade School of Art’s ‘golden generation’, Bomberg in turn taught artists including Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, inspiring the formation of the Borough Group in 1946.

Through over 70 works, the exhibition offers a chance to reassess Bomberg’s stylistic evolution, which started with a trip to Paris where he met Picasso, Derain and Modigliani. It explores key themes within the artist’s remarkable career, including engagement with his Jewish East End upbringing and with Yiddish culture, his contribution to pre-war British modernism and his role as a war artist in both World Wars which saw the development of a more figurative and expressionist style. It also illustrates his achievements in landscape painting, in particular those created in Spain and Palestine, and as a graphic artist, alongside a rich sequence of self-portraits and portraits of friends and family'.

However since the PHG describes itself as a 'collection of collections', there's always a lot more to see than their main exhibition. I started in the print room where there's a wonderful exhibition entitled 'The Artchitect's Eye' and displays some of the work in the Peter Collymore Gift, donated in 2016, it's the latest acquisition to contribute to the narrative around personal choices made by collectors.
I selected a two choice pieces:

 Above Pablo Picasso 'Vingt Poems de Gongors' 1948, Aquatint on paper

 Above Prunella Clough 'Shadow Play 8 1992an etching on paper

 From there I wandered round the permanent collection and chose these pieces to photograph:

 I love the languorous nature of Duncan Grant's 'Bathers by the Pond', even more delightful because it's set beside the pond at Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex where Duncan Grant settled with Vanessa Bell in 1916. Apparently it's thought there whereas Cezanne painted male bathers as a result of his shyness of female models, for Grant this represented a homoerotic fantasy.

 I love the Edward Burra below, it depicts the harbour at Hastings painted in 1947 and is delightful, it's on loan from a private collection.

 This Portrait of a Girl by Lucian Freud in 1950 is oil on copper and has a very fine quality. It's of Anne Dunn with whom Freud was having an affair, she married Michael Wishart in the same year.

 Glyn Philpot painted this portrait of Mrs Clement Cross, his sister in 1934.

 He also painted this portrait of Henry Thomas in 1934-5 who had arrived from Jamaica as a stoker on a merchant vessel and missed his boat home.

 I then went to have a look at the Paula Rego sketchbooks where you can see the preparatory drawings for paintings, the finished paintings are available to look at in a book in the gallery as well. A fascinating way of presenting the exhibition.

 Above a study for 'The Soldier's Daughter'

 This was Dona Redonda and Paula Rego's watercolour and ink on paper, wonderful facial expressions.