© David Bomberg estate

'There is no fixed way in which a line goes, but there is a relationship between the lines' (David Bomberg). This is one of a series of drawings of the Inns of Court completed by Bomberg in the mid-to-late forties during the period when he began his career as a highly influential teacher. Towards the end of the war he took over a post as drawing master at the Bartlett School of Architecture prior to his appointment at the Borough Polytechnic (1945-53). Bomberg's teaching also strengthened and informed his own work. Here he uses strong, fluid charcoal strokes to trace the outline of the building to evoke a sense of mass.