RETURNING TO THE TRENCHES

1916

By CRW Nevinson

‘There is no beauty except in strife, and no masterpiece without aggressiveness’, stated the painter, etcher and lithographer CRW Nevinson, in a 1915 interview in The Daily Express, illustrated by an image of the painting Returning to the Trenches, on which this 1916 drypoint print, of the same title, is based.

CRW Nevinson
Returning to the Trenches, 1915. Drypoint 

The image portrays a platoon of French soldiers (or ‘poilus’) marching towards the front, a scene the artist would have encountered many times while on service as a Red Cross ambulanceman in France and Belgium in the early years of the war, before being invalided out.

Nevinson was hugely influenced by Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist manifesto, as well as the bellicose ideas promoted by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, the Italian leader of the Futurist movement. Both men he counted as friends, though he fell out with Lewis.  ‘Our Futurist technique is the only possible medium to express the crudeness, violence and brutality seen and felt on the present battlefields of Europe,’ he continued, in the same Express interview. ‘Modern art needs not beauty, or restraint, but vitality’.

The patriotic determination of the platoon is heightened by the closely scored lines etched into the work; the swooshing momentum of their lower torsos converts the group of individuals into a single unit driven by seemingly mechanical force towards the battlefield. Interestingly, some sense of humanity is maintained by the detailed faces of several of the soldiers. 

This print is among several by Nevinson that will be displayed by Osborne Samuel (among other works) at the 37th edition of the London Original Print Fair, at Somerset House, May 26-29.