CRW Nevinson’s prints of war and peace

To mark the centenary of the First World War, an exhibition of Nevinson’s work is to be held in London, showing both his wartime and peacetime artworks.

A graduate of Slade School of Art, Nevinson joined the Friend’s Ambulance Unit as a dedicated pacifist in 1914. He then served in the Royal Army Medical Corps but was invalided out of the army in 1916.

An exhibition of his paintings that September brought him to the attention of Charles Masterson of the War Propaganda Bureau, who appointed Nevinson as an official war artist on the Western Front.

Osborne Samuel Gallery, which is hosting the exhibition, says, ‘Nevinson’s work was stark in drawing the public’s attention to the increasingly mechanised nature of modern warfare, far removed from the romantic artistry that often accompanied the early stages of the war.’

Nevinson made 148 prints, etchings, lithographs and other works between 1914 and 1933 and as well as his war-time works, the gallery will also be showing his peacetime prints, including depictions of London and Paris in the 1920s.

CRW Nevinson: A Printmaker in War & Peace, is at Osborne Samuel, 23a Bruton Street, London W1J, from 25 September-18 October.