The most creative artists in the early years of the twentieth century in England were immigrants. The earliest were Warsaw-born painter Alfred Wolmark and the sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, who was from New York. Younger Jewish artists were to follow, most notably David Bomberg, who was born in Birmingham in 1890 and brought up in London's East End. He, along with Mark Gertler, Bernard Mininsky, and Jacob Kramer, was part of an extraordinary generation, all with foreign origins, that was active in London during the early years of the twentieth century.

Created two years before Bomberg's death, the monumental image Hear, O Israel can be seen as a devastating and culminating self-portrait, and it stands as one of the great artistic autobiographical statements. Its title refers to the Shema, a biblical declaration of God's unity: "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One," which devout Jews recite twice a day. Hear, O Israel is an outstanding example of Bomberg's late expressionist style and is regarded as one of the most important religious paintings in twentieth-century British art. It depicts a shrouded man, probably the artist himself, passionately clasping the Torah. Painted with thick strokes and intense color, the semi-abstract figure is submerged in personal pain and despair, reflecting the artist's own disillusionment caused by the long period of neglect suffered in the latter part of his life.

During his early years, Jewish life in the East End of London was a powerful source of inspiration for Bomberg's work. The son of Polish immigrants, Bomberg was fortunate to receive a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in London. Although the Cubist and Futurist movements were seriously considered by Slade students, Bomberg always resisted being labeled and had no desire to associate formally with any artistic group. Initially, he developed a style characterized by the use of angular, abstract forms to give expressive force to his representational subjects. Using actual East End sites and events, he developed a flat, geometrical style. However, he never eliminated the human form or physical description.

World War I brought military service and personal losses for Bomberg, and during this period he shifted from pure skeletal forms to the rich flow of paint and color to create forms of a deeply expressive nature. In 1923, the artist received funds from a Zionist organization to record the pioneering work in Palestine, where he remained until 1927, producing remarkable studies of Petra and Palestine. From that time until the end of his life, his style changed, and he began to employ an expressionist manner and heavily impastoed paint to give greater force to his forms.

The scant recognition and long period of neglect suffered by Bomberg during the last thirty years of his life, along with his unwillingness to accept compromises in his career, contributed to his final bitter years and may be attributed to the highly individual and disturbing nature of his work. This was to be rectified by critics such as Richard Cork, who, thirty years after Bomberg's death said, "Bomberg can now be seen as one of the most rewarding and prescient painters Britain has produced in the modern era." Subsequent memorial exhibitions and written evaluations have secured this reputation and evaluation. Successive public exhibitions and critical acclaim have redressed the common attitude of great appreciation for his earlier constructivist period over the later series of family portraits, landscapes, and final tragic autobiographical statements.