David Bomberg painted this biblical picture in the last four months of 1912 while he was still at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Mrs Kitty Newmark, his sister, remembers him working on it at their parents’ home at 20 Tenter Buildings, St Mark’s Street, Aldgate, London, where he lived until January 1913. Bomberg often chose subjects with Old Testament subjects as he was interested in his Jewish heritage. It shows the moment when God had guided the prophet Ezekiel to a valley full of bones and commanded him to speak: ‘There was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together’ (Ezekiel, chapter 37). Miss Alice Mayes, the artist’s first wife, has said that he based this work on another picture called Island of Joy (Sotheby’s, 5 July 1972, lot 79) which was painted for the summer competition of the Slade Sketch Club in 1912, when the theme ‘Joy’ had been set as the competition subject; it had also been called at one time Primeval Decoration. Both remained in the collection of Bomberg's second wife and widow, Lilian Holt (1898-1983) when d'offay Couper Gallery acquired Vision of Ezekiel (also jokingly referred to by the artist many years later as: Dream of Hezekiah) from her in 1970. Funds bequeathed by Mrs H. K. Morton to the Contemporary Art Society helped the Tate Gallery purchase it.
