Mount Zion and the Church of the Dormition, Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, Bomberg began to engage with landscape and work en plein air for the first time. He observed, 'You must remember I was a poor boy from the East End and had never seen the sunlight before'. This landscape, one of a number of The Church of the Dormition (now Hagia Maria Sion Abbey), located just beyond the walls of the Old City, shows a loose handling in the foreground with a tighter focus on the topographical details in the background. Bomberg's predominantly earthy palette, offset by white, creates an impression of the heat and the light and of the buildings rising up organically from the rock beneath. He also painted the same view at night.