with Redfern Gallery, London;
Lord and Lady Attenborough, April 1984
Exhibition History:
New York, Bourgeois Gallery, The Old World and the New: An Exhibition of Paintings, Etching, Lithographs and Woodcuts by C.R.W. Nevinson of London, 1920 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue);
London, Leicester Galleries, Paintings of War by C.R.W. Nevinson (late Private RAMC), September – October 1916 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 33);
London, The Leicester Galleries at the Alpine Club Gallery, Nash and Nevinson in War and Peace, October – November 1977 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 17);
London, The Maclean Gallery, C.R.W. Nevinson: The Great War and After, February – March 1980 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 9);
London, British Museum, Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960, September 1990 – January 1991 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 22);
London, Imperial War Museum, C.R.W. Nevinson: The Twentieth Century, October 1999 – January 2000 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 31);
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Prints and Printmaking, 1 February – 30 April 2011;
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: The Impact of War, 15 October 2014 – 4 January 2015;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Sheffield, Museums Sheffield, Darkness into Light, 20 October 2018 – 13 January 2019;
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020
Literature:
P. G. Konody, Modern War: Paintings by C.R.W. Nevinson, Grant Richards Ltd., London, 1917 (p. 63);
Frederick Keppel & Co., Etchings and Lithographs by C.R.W. Nevinson, New York, 1919;
Bourgeois Gallery, The Old World and the New: An Exhibition of Paintings, Etching, Lithographs and Woodcuts by C.R.W. Nevinson of London, New York, 1920;
Malcolm C. Salaman, Modern Master of Etching: C.R.W. Nevinson The Studio, London and New York, 1932 (pl. 1);
Robin Garton et al., British Printmakers 1855-1955, Garton & Co., Devizes, 1992 (p. 151, pl. 195)
Nevinson uses the stark contrasts of the drypoint medium to immense effect, offering us an image that must have been familiar to many who had seen the recruiting drives that followed the beginning of WWI. Surviving film footage from the period showing the town regiments leaving for the Front gives us a flavour of the kind of massed march of soldiery through the streets of a town. Here, the jagged lines of the bayonets rise above the densely packed stream of soldiers which winds towards us but there are no onlookers to cheer them on, no flags, no encouragement, just the simple realisation that they are en route to war. As they pass just slightly beneath our viewpoint, perhaps we are the only witness to their march. The grim faces which fade away to simple shapes in the background unifies these men into a single mass and the sense of forward movement is as vivid as the intimation of boots ringing on cobbled streets.
