Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, A.R.A.

Drypoint, 1916, a rich impression with burr, signed in pencil within the platemark beneath the image, on laid paper, with full margins, in good condition

Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by the present owners, April 1984

P.G.Konody, Modern War: Paintings by C.R.W.Nevinson, Grant Richards Ltd., London 1917, p.63
New York, Frederick Keppel & Co., Etchings and Lithographs by C.R.W.Nevinson, 1919
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
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
London, Leicester Galleries, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Paintings of War by C.R.W.Nevinson (late Private RAMC), September – October 1916, cat.no.33
London, The Leicester Galleries at the Alpine Club Gallery, Nash and Nevinson in War and Peace, October – November 1977, Nevinson section cat.no.17
London, The Maclean Gallery, C.R.W.Nevinson: The Great War and After, February – March 1980, cat.no.9 London, British Museum, Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960, September 1990 – January 1991, cat.no.22
London, Imperial War Museum, C.R.W.Nevinson: The Twentieth Century, October 1999 – January 2000, cat.no.31

A richly inked impression printing strongly. In good overall condition apart from slight light- and mount-staining, backboard-staining, remains of paper tape at upper and lower extreme right edge of sheet
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Nevinson uses the stark contrasts of the medium to immense effect in A Dawn, 1914, offering us an image that must have been familiar to many who had seen the recruiting drives that followed the beginning of WWI, and surviving film footage of the period of 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 could believe ourselves the only witness to their march.

As in many of his earliest Great War images, the troops depicted are French, but this in no way distracts from the feeling that we are being shown the 'everyman' experience of the Western Front. 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.