In July 1953 in a catalogue essay for a forthcoming exhibition of work by his students, the Borough Bottega, Bomberg wrote a manifesto which encapsulated his concerns with man's spiritual existence, discussed the artist's approach to form and addressed the legacy of Cézanne. Writing of 'the meaning of drawing and how it is related to the interpretation of form' and 'the study of structure', Bomberg proposed that 'the approach to mass' depended on the individual's own freedom: to draw a subject was more than merely a response to 'the organic character of mass', but was also spurred by a belief that 'we have urgent need of the affirmation of [man's] spiritual significance and his individuality'.1personal and spiritual dimensions found powerful expression not just in Bomberg's landscapes but also in his drawings of French churches, which date from the same year that he was formulating these ideas.
In Spring 1953 Bomberg and his wife Lilian travelled to France to draw several of its cathedrals including Notre Dame and Chartres. These drawings vary from those in which there is wealth of architectural detail including portals, windows and buttresses
to others such as the present work which are altogether more mysterious and atmospheric. In Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris it is as though the artist has taken the cathedral apart, only to rebuild it again, stripping it of all but its most essential structural components. The heavy bulk of the cathedral is reduced to a light skeleton and the building glimmers to life from out of the twilight, yet the result still possesses an imposing grandeur.

1. David Bomberg, catalogue introduction for Exhibition of the Borough Bottega, Berkeley Galleries, London, November-December 1953