CRW Nevinson 1889-1946

Gifted by the Artist to Martin Doyle
Gifted to Mrs Darlington
Thence by descent

In 1917, Nevinson was appointed an official war artist. Having earlier been a driver for the Friends Ambulance Service he was now finding Modernist styles less adequate for describing the horrors of modern war, and he increasingly painted in a more realistic manner. Nevinson’s later WW1 paintings were based on short visits to the Western Front. The small town of Peronne stands south of Baupaume, an area that witnessed some of the most intensive fighting of WW1, initially taken by the Germans in September 1914, retaken by the British on 18 March 1917 only to be retaken by the Germans on the 23 rd until it was liberated by Australian troops in on 1 st September 1918.

Nevinson was in this area in in July and August 1917. He felt hampered by the officers who were detailed to oversee his movement as he tried on occasions to get near the front and recalled coming under considerable fire. Many of Nevinson’ s work were later produced in the studio back in Belsize Park. This small but intense drawing of Troops Near Peronne, depicting an endless column of marching troops in a desolate, blasted landscape looks something very much that might have been drawn in situ.

Private Collection, UK
Osborne Samuel, London

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no 9.

During his time both as an ambulance driver and with the Red Cross, Nevinson was captivated by the dense lines of marching French soldiers seemingly moving as one. Informed by the Futurist techniques for depicting movement, seen in such works a Boccioni’s ‘The City Rises’ and ‘States of Mind’, the French soldiers in ‘Returning to the Trenches’ merge into one unified mechanical mass, their limbs blurring together, giving one the impression of a speeding train disappearing into the distance. In his autobiography Nevinson stated that these soldiers may have been part of the French 89th territorial division, and in the oil painting of the same subject the early French uniform is distinctive with its impractical red cap. In an interview with The Daily Express in February 1915 where the painting was reproduced he stated:

“I have tried to express the emotion produced by the apparent ugliness and dullness of modern warfare. Our Futurist technique is the only possible medium to express the crudeness, violence, and brutality of the emotions seen and felt on the present battlefields of Europe … Modern art needs not beauty, or restraint, but vitality.”

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no 1.

​Exhibited first at Leicester Galleries in 1916 as ​’Ypres after the First Bombardment’

In his time with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) Nevinson was struck by the desolation left in French and Flemish towns. Having depicted the vibrancy of modern life in London before the war, the contrast of wartime devastation was a shocking juxtaposition. During the First Battle of Ypres (19th October – 22 November 1922) he saw heavy shelling. The ancient town was a key strategic position and was heavily fought over throughout the war. Nevinson wrote in his autobiography that he came under fire whilst driving an ambulance to collect wounded from an advanced dressing station in Ypres in November 1914. Ypres after the Second Bombardment was one of Nevinsons first drypoints and was exhibited at Leicester Galleries in September 1916. Paul Nash was so struck by this print when he first saw it in March 1917 that he wrote to his wife from the front to ask her to buy him an impression.

Signed, dated & numbered from the edition of 200

Part of the series Britain’s Efforts and Ideals: Making Aircraft

Ref: Black 20

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no 25.

The word ‘reclaimed’ is used here by Nevinson in bitter irony, most likely referring to the scorched earth policy in which retreating German troops would destroy ground including villages, woods and farmland as they retreated.

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 22.

‘Survivors at Arras’ is a careful architectural composition, of the last two buildings supposedly left standing in the town of Arras after a nearby battle of the same name in April-May 1917. The print was reproduced on the invitation card to Nevinson’s extremely successful April-May 1919 exhibition of war prints at Frederick Keppel & Co in New York.

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints.
London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 21.

NEVINSON AND ‘MAKING AIRCRAFT’

‘Britain’s Efforts and Ideals’ was a series of prints published by the Department of Information, the wartime propaganda wing of the government. The prints were intended to be widely distributed and exhibited to boost morale and encourage support for the British war effort. Nevinson was selected for the topic of ‘Making Aircraft’ a new element of modern warfare. Each print was published in editions of 200 signed and a further 100 unsigned impressions. ‘Efforts’, such as Nevinson’s series, were sold for £2 2s (£100 today) and ‘Ideals’, symbolic subjects, for £3 3s (£154 today). Art critic P.G. Konody wrote of Nevinson’s lithographs in the Observer; “To look at his flying pictures is to share his experience of swooping through the air. Here are all the essentials of movement, of exhilaration, of the victory of human intelligence over the forces of nature and these essentials are detached from their insignificant and disturbing details.” The series was exhibited at the Fine Art Society in early July 1917 and went on to tour Britain, France, American, Canada and Australia, launching Nevinson’s international career as a printmaker. 

Here a British plane dives towards an enemy plane, nicknamed a ‘Taube’, meaning ‘dove’, so called because its outline is curved like that of a bird.

Leicester Galleries
Major Charles Fair (DSO) and Marjorie Fair (purchased from the above March 1918)

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no 27.

This very rare lithograph was first exhibited at Nevinson’s second exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in March 1918, entitled `War Pictures by CRW Nevinson Official War Artist on the Western Front’, where it was purchased by Major Charles Fair. Commissioned in the 19th London Regiment, he saw significant action during the Battle of the Somme after which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

By the summer of 1916 ‘the Great Push’ referred to the Somme July-November 1916 – after which the term ‘push’ made reference to any British offensive. Familiar with Nash’s scenes of flattened devastation ‘After a Push’ has similarities to Nash’s ‘Mine Crater’ of the previous year. Both artists tackled the problem of depicting scenes of infinite destruction by raising the horizon line and turning the ground into a wall confronting the viewer. Here the eerie ponds that pock mark the infinite landscape merge with the dark heavy sky – the focus on the mud that swallows the dead.

From the edition of 40

Ref: Black 51

Nevinson first produced his bayonet design for the poster for his own show of paintings at the Leicester Galleries, March, 1918, entitled “War”, illustrated in Edward Bayes’s “The Underworld: Taking cover in a Tube Station during a London air raid” in the Imperial War Museum collection. Nevinson later adapted the design and the accompanying text for a poster issued by the National War Savings Committee to promote the raising of funds.

The remarkable design depicts massed fixed bayonets printed in orange against a bright yellow background. The bold design and the superimposition of the black stylized text against a field of fiery colour variants is arresting. Image and text are successfully integrated through the elaboration of an appropriately cubist letterform, whose spikey design echoes the raised bayonets, rendered with mathematical precision.

Furthermore, Nevinson’s design exemplifies the optical disturbance associated with “dazzle” effects, those made possible by combining the geometric experimentation of cubism with the simplifications of the Japanese woodcut of the Ukiyo-e (floating world). In poster terms, dazzle effects were deployed to attract the eye against an increasingly hectic background of metropolitan spectacular. Large-scale dazzle effects were famously used by Norman Wilkinson and colleagues to camouflage shipping.

The cultural significance of Nevinson’s poster cannot be overstated. Looking back over the artistic experimentation of the 20th century, the consistent recurrence of dazzle and strobe effects points to the power of this design as a major breakthrough.

The subject of men marching was a recurring theme with both Nash and Nevinson. Here however, rather than the soldiers marching in single file, as we can see in ‘Returning to the Trenches’, they are turned, either marching shoulder to shoulder pushing the enemy back, or bayonets raised in celebration. The same image was used in an earlier poster ‘Now the Bayonets Have Won Through’.

The posters were designed to encourage the purchasing of War Savings Certificates, a way of attracting war financing from the home population.

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 31.

First shown in the 1918 Leicester Galleries exhibition, ‘Over the Lines’ depicts an aerial view of the front from a reconnaissance plane. In April 1919, Albert Gallatin wrote, “the actual drawing for the print was made in the course of a flight to bomb Cambrai in 1917.” There is a related oil painting owned by the Imperial War Museum, London.

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 30.

First exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, London, March 1918.

The road from the city of Arras to the town OF Baupaume was a major British supply route during the Great War. Here the road continues across infinite rolling hills, the only variation on the flat expansive landscape a few broken trees.

Nevinson wrote in his autobiography of his return to London in 1918; “I got back to find that a bomb had fallen on the printing works where my lithographs were kept and my stones were damaged. The reason for the extra ridge on my lithograph of the ‘Arras-Bapaume Road’ is because I had to put it in to cover the injury done to my original stone.”

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 55.

First exhibited in his October 1919 solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, ‘Temples of New York’ depicts the steeple of Trinity Church in the centre of the financial heart of New York. The angle suggests that Nevinson may have been looking out from the recently completed Equitable Building. Nevinson may well have seen this view before the war. In 1913 the Goupil Gallery in London held an exhibition of photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn featuring sharp angled views of the skyscrapers of New York including a view of the Trinity Church spire. Nevinson would most likely have been aware of the work as his friend H.G. Wells wrote the introductory essay for the catalogue. Ambivalent about the power wielded by the financial sector in New York, Nevinson depicts the spire, the tallest building in New York until the 1890s, dominated by the new skyscrapers, the very symbol of capitalism.

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 59.

After the war, civil unrest broke out across the country in major cities as unions fought to establish basic rights such as a forty- hour week for a now over-populated work force. The towering black square of the dockyard warehouse in Southwark with the backdrop of a stormy sky, emphasises the protesting workers’ threat to the status quo.

Jonathan Black, C.R.W. Nevinson The Complete Prints, London, 2014, p.
142, no. 52

First exhibited Senefelder Club, Leicester Galleries, London, January 1919

At almost poster-size, Wet Evening, Oxford Street (1919) is the largest of Nevinson’s lithographs. Its composition is thus all the more arresting: heads and umbrellas stretching back into the distance, cheek by jowl, ever more indistinguishable as they recede. Striking, too, is the fragmentation of faces – screened, averted, anonymised. The woman nearest to the lower edge is reduced to one eye beneath a stylish hat; the  gentleman on her left, to a half-visible moustache. The newspaper seller above is surmised only by his open mouth and fanned merchandise, held by unseen hands.

Exhibited first with the Senefelder Club at the Leicester Galleries in January 1919, Wet Evening, Oxford Street was shown in May at New York’s Keppel Gallery, where the reviewer expounded on the print’s scale and ‘technical excellence’:

In one of the more important lithographs in the exhibition … the artist has taken a rainy day in Oxford Street, London – or some other street, it doesn’t matter – and made of its raised umbrellas, its downpour of rain, its white faces under the dark domes of the umbrellas, its artificial lights in the street, a composition in which Renoir’s method of composing with light and the method of the Cubists of composing with lines and flat planes are brilliantly combined.¹

Nevinson’s command of the medium is indeed impressive, demonstrated above all in the rendering of light and texture: the softness of textiles, sheen of wet umbrellas, glow from the window and pendant lights.

¹ ‘Lithographs by C.R.W. Nevinson: Art at Home and Abroad’, New York Times (25 May 1919), p. 83

Black, Jonathan. CRW Nevinson – The Complete Prints. London: Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, 2014. cat. no. 77.

Used as the cover image for the catalogue at Bourgeois Galleries, New York, 1920, ‘New York: An Abstraction’ may be based on a stretch of elevated railway that ran along Third Avenue. The wall of skyscrapers and the train tracks dominate the composition, leaving no space for human beings, described by Jonathan Black as “New York’s somewhat inhuman architectural dynamism”. Nevinson later renamed the oil painting of the same subject, ‘The Soul of a Soulless City’ – indicative of the artist’s now distinctly negative view of the city.

The Leicester Galleries, London

Published in The Studio no.481, vol CV