Friday, May 1, 2015

Christopher Nevinson's Urban Paintings

Christopher Richard Wynne (C.R.W.) Nevinson (1889-1946) was part of the first generation of strongly modernist British painters, befriending and later feuding with, for example, Wyndham Lewis. Nevinson was influenced early in his career by Futurism and Cubism, though he seldom plunged very deeply into their desiderata. Perhaps innate English conservatism and practicality held him back more than he thought or wished.

A fairly long Wikipedia biography is here, and I wrote about his Great War paintings here.

This post features his depictions of various cities. As is often the case for artists of his time, he never really settled into a signature style. Actually, he did have a style used during the first two or three years of the Great War that he is best known for. But he didn't stick with it. The images below are arranged in approximately chronological order.

Gallery

The Railway Bridge, Charenton - 1911-12

Le vieux port - 1913

Bravo! - 1913

Paris Fortifications - 1913

Temples of New York - drypoint etching, 1919

Soul of the Soulless City (New York, an Abstraction) - 1920

New York by Night - ca. 1920

Quartier Latin ca. 1920

La Corniche - 1920

Victoria Embankment, London - 1924

Notre Dame de Paris from Quai des Grandes Augustins - 1920s

London, Winter - 1928

The Strand by Night - ca. 1937

Thameside - 1941

1 comment:

  1. I suppose the thing about changing styles over the years is that the viewer cannot always pick a Nevinson painting instantly. The machine gunners and the troops resting, on the other hand, can both be identified as Nevinsons at 100 metres with your eyes closed.

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