Reclining Nude

A popular and effective teacher, Bloch taught at Camberwell School of Art between 1949 and 1954, and this reclining female may have been executed during one of his life classes, which were 'full to the rafters' with enthusiastic students.

Bloch's graphic work was the result of careful observation. His friend and fellow artist Josef Herman noted how he pored over sketches and reworked images, often adding emphatic black lines in ink and wash to pencil sketches. His grandson, Peter Rossiter, has called Bloch's life drawing 'a pursuit in itself', further noting that 'The key to understanding Bloch's drawings, both landscape and figure, comic and serious, is to see them as being as varied as a dialogue. The aim of this dialogue is a relentless pursuit of truth'.