Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, A.R.A.

Drypoint, 1916, a rich impression with burr, signed and dated in pencil within the platemark beneath the image, from the edition of 75 issued in P.G. Konody, Modern War: Paintings by C.R.W.Nevinson, Grant Richards, London 1917, enclosed in a flap at the back of the book, on F. J. Head & Co. laid paper, with full margins, in good condition

Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owners, July 1985

London, Leicester Galleries, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings of War by C.R.W.Nevinson (late Private RAMC), September – October 1916, cat.no.35
New York, Frederick Keppel & Co., Etchings and Lithographs by C.R.W.Nevinson, 1919
London, The Leicester Galleries at the Alpine Club Gallery, Nash and Nevinson in War and Peace, October – 1977, Nevinson section cat.no.1
London, Hayward Gallery, Vorticism and its Allies, March – June 1974, cat.no.169
London, The Maclean Gallery, C.R.W.Nevinson: The Great War and After, February – March 1980, cat.no.10
London, Imperial War Museum, C.R.W.Nevinson: The Twentieth Century, October 1999 – January 2000, cat.no.34
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939, January – June 2008, cat.no.19

A fine impression. In good overall condition apart from slight light-staining. Very minor handling creases to the margins (only visible in a raking light). Two small areas of discoloration at left and right margin verso, just visible recto. Slight uneven back-board-staining.
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First shown at the 1916 Leicester Galleries exhibition alongside the painting and pastel of the same subject (National Gallery of Canada and Imperial War Museum respectively), Returning to the Trenches is one of Nevinson's most immediately recognisable images of the Great War. The impelling sweep of the column of French soldiers is perhaps the image which most clearly carries on the language of Futurism which the artist had espoused prior to 1914, and the repeating pattern of the marching legs and the extended force lines which exaggerate and animate their movement are reminiscent of much contemporary Italian work, especially paintings such as Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912 (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). However, Nevinson's use of such a manner, which becomes even more powerful in the monochrome of the etching, combines such experimental techniques for expressing movement with a hugely evocative subject.

This combination, which manages to simultaneously suggest the grim determination of this group of men moving forward at some speed, immediately struck a chord with the public, and the perception that Nevinson had forged a style which brought together the truth of a subject via an avant-garde manner is much commented on in contemporary reviews. In fact, Returning to the Trenches was to remain perhaps Nevinson's most abstracted Great War image. Based on his own observations during his first stint on the Western Front in late 1914, this image captures all the apparently conflicting elements that Nevinson brings together so deftly. Whilst there is a good deal of characterization of the troops, indeed rather more so than in the painted version, one is left in no doubt that this is a single body of troops. This melding of the individual into the military whole was not a new strand of imagery for artists, but Nevinson's ability to render it without any extraneous glamour, or hint of heroism, but without losing a sense of common nobility in his subject, is notable. By choosing French soldiers, as indeed we also find in some of the other early war images, Nevinson deftly sidestepped the suggestion of patriotism and jingoism and also allowed himself more leeway with the official censor than might have been the case with depictions of British troops.