CRW Nevinson 1889-1946
Born in Hampstead, North London on 13th August 1889, Nevinson studied at the St. Johns Wood School of Art (1907 – 08), before moving to the Slade (1908 to 1912), where he studied under the renowned Professor of Drawing, Henry Tonks. He then studied in Paris at the Academie Julien (1912 – 17) and also studied at the Circle Russe.
In Paris, Nevinson shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920) and became influenced by Cubism. Heavily influenced by the Italian Futurist movement Nevinson drew inspiration from the modern city with it’s new machines and modes of transport.
Nevinson first exhibited in London in 1910 and became a founder member of the London Group, formerly the Camden Town Group, in 1913, exhibiting with Walter Sickert, Camille Pissarro, Edward Wadsworth, David Bomberg, Sylvia Gosse and Paul Nash. In 1915 the ‘Vorticists’ held their only group show at the Dore Gallery. Developed by Wyndham Lewis from ideas of the Futurists, of whom he was highly critical, the movement included Gaudier Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, William Roberts, David Bomberg and Christopher Nevinson. ... read more
Born in Hampstead, North London on 13th August 1889, Nevinson studied at the St. Johns Wood School of Art (1907 – 08), before moving to the Slade (1908 to 1912), where he studied under the renowned Professor of Drawing, Henry Tonks. He then studied in Paris at the Academie Julien (1912 – 17) and also studied at the Circle Russe.
In Paris, Nevinson shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920) and became influenced by Cubism. Heavily influenced by the Italian Futurist movement Nevinson drew inspiration from the modern city with it’s new machines and modes of transport.
Nevinson first exhibited in London in 1910 and became a founder member of the London Group, formerly the Camden Town Group, in 1913, exhibiting with Walter Sickert, Camille Pissarro, Edward Wadsworth, David Bomberg, Sylvia Gosse and Paul Nash. In 1915 the ‘Vorticists’ held their only group show at the Dore Gallery. Developed by Wyndham Lewis from ideas of the Futurists, of whom he was highly critical, the movement included Gaudier Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, William Roberts, David Bomberg and Christopher Nevinson.
From 13 November 1914, Nevinson spent nine weeks in France with the FAU and the British Red Cross Society, mostly working at a disused goods shed by Dunkirk rail station known as the Shambles. The Shambles housed some three thousand badly wounded French troops, who had been evacuated from the Front and then all but abandoned. For weeks they had been left unfed and untended with the dead and dying lying together on dirty straw. Nevinson, alongside his father and other volunteers, worked to dress wounds, help clean and disinfect the shed and started to make it habitable. Nevinson later depicted his experiences in The Shambles in two paintings, ‘The Doctor’ and ‘La Patrie’. He was discharged in 1916, and in 1917 he was appointed an Official War Artist where he produced some of the most powerful images of the First World War. ‘Paths of Glory’, Nevinson’s painting of two fallen British soldiers in a field of mud and barbed wire was exhibited in 1918 despite it’s being not being passed for exhibition by the official censor. Nevinson insisted on displaying it with a brown strip of paper across it, with the word ‘Censored’ scrawled on it. This earned Nevinson a reprimand not just for displaying the painting but using the word ‘Censored’ without authorisation.
In 1919, Nevinson made the first of a number of visits to New York, on arrival commenting to a journalist that “New York was built for me”. His spectacular views of skyscrapers and the city streets viewed as canyons are amongst his most dramatic works. In 1929 Nevinson was elected a member of the New English Art Club; in 1932 to the Royal Society of British Arts and in 1939 an Associate of the Royal Academy.
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