Christopher
Nevinson, the son of Henry Nevinson, the
radical journalist, and Margaret Nevinson,
an activist in the campaign for women's rights,
was born in London in 1889. His parents
causes were at the time so unpopular that Christopher remembers as
a child being booed by neighbours while walking along the street.
In 1907 Nevinson went to the St John's Wood School of Art, but later
transferred to the Slade School where he
met Stanley Spencer and Mark
Gertler. One of his teachers, Henry Tonks,
told Nevinson he lacked the talent to become an artist.
After leaving the Slade School Nevinson
worked as a journalist and artist in Paris where he became an important
figure in the French avant garde. In 1911 Nevinson discovered
Cubism which had a lasting influence on his work.
On the outbreak of the First World War, Nevinson,
as a pacifist,
refused to become involved in combat duties, and volunteered instead
to work for the Red Cross. Sent to France
in 1914, Nevinson worked as a driver, stretcher-bearer and hospital
orderly. Later he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and helped nurse
soldiers being treated at the Third General Hospital in London.
After contacting rheumatic fever in January, 1916, he was invalided
out of the army.
While recuperating, Nevinson painted a series of paintings based on
his experiences in France. An exhibition
of his work in September, 1916, brought him to the attention of Charles
Masterman, head of the government's War Propaganda
Bureau (WPB). In 1917 the WPB sent Nevinson to the Western
Front where he painted another sixty pictures.
Nevinson's most famous war painting is Machine-Gun.
One critic wrote: "the hard lines of the machinery dictate those
of the robotised soldiers who become as one with the killing machine."
Another pointed out that: "the painting translates the mechanical
aspect of modern warfare where man and machine combine to form a single
force of nature". Other war paintings by Nevinson include Paths
of Glory, The Harvest of Battle,
Marching Men, A
Group of Soldiers, Troops Resting
and The Road from Arras to Bapaume.
Nevinson was unhappy with his work as a member of War
Propaganda Bureau. He shared the feelings of Paul
Nash who wrote at the time: "I am no longer an artist. I
am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting
to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate
will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn
their lousy souls." Some of Nevinson's paintings such as Paths
of Glory, were considered to be unacceptable and were not
exhibited to after the Armistice.
After the war Nevinson concentrated on painting townscapes and genre
pictures. He published his autobiography, Paint
and Prejudice in 1937 and two years later was elected an
ARA. Nevinson became a war artist in the Second
World War but his career came to an end when he had a severe stroke
in 1942. Christopher Nevinson died in 1946.
Christopher Nevinson, Machine-Gun (1915)
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