MODERN WAR 
 
 PAINTINGS 
 
 BY 
 
 C. R. W. NEVINSON 
 
 WITH AN [f rr -)DUCTO[<\ cSS/^Y BY 
 
 P. G. KONOD\' 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FINE ARTS LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 ND 497.N52K82 
 
 Modern war; palntingsby C. R. W. Nevinson 
 
 3 1924 015 182 938 
 
 
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MODERN WAR 
 
MODERN WAR 
 PAINTINGS BY 
 C. R. W. NEVINSON 
 
 WITH AN ESSAY BY 
 
 P. G. KONODY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GRANT RICHARDS LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET 
 
 MDCCCCXVII 
 
GARDEN CITY 
 PRESS LTD., 
 PRINTERS , 
 LETCHWORTH. 
 
To Lord Rothermere 
 
 under whose hospitable roof it was completed, 
 
 this essay is dedicated 
 
 as a modest mark of esteem 
 
 by the author 
 
 Salehurst, November, 1916 
 
MODERN WAR 
 
 The chronicles of war and battle in art begin with what may be 
 called athletics — the single combat in which man measures his 
 strength against man — and end in monstrous mechanism and high 
 explosives. In Homeric days individual prowess stood for every- 
 thing in warfare. Whole armies remained mere spectators, whilst 
 the leaders challenged each other and attacked each other single- 
 handed. If a general engagement followed, it was again a series 
 of simultaneous duels, a gladiatorial contest on a large scale. It 
 was the Olympic games with the addition of death or conquest. 
 
 Tliis was the spirit in which war was treated by the sculptors 
 of ancient Greece. On the metopes of the Parthenon, on the tomb 
 of Attains, everywhere, indeed, where the deeds of Greek heroes, 
 real or mythical, the Battles of the Centaurs and Lapithse, the 
 Trojan War, the Battle of the Amazons, formed the sculptors' 
 subjects, we find this athletic conception, this glorification of the 
 human body in action, lithe, supple, harmonious in line, grace 
 wedded to strength. Greek pictorial art has to be judged almost 
 entirely from literary references, the few things that have come down 
 to us being the inferior productions of a late, decadent period. But 
 it is certain that Greek painting was more sculptural than strictly 
 pictorial in character, and that a classic battle picture would bear 
 a close resemblance to a painted relief in which everything is 
 centred on the rhythmic treatment of the human body, inanimate 
 nature being almost entirely neglected. 
 
 The background of nature, of course, does not enter into this 
 gladiatorial conception of war, because, apart from the essentially 
 sculptural character of this art, hand-to-hand fighting is not 
 affected by topographic considerations, by the lay of the land. 
 The landscape background is neglected and does not, indeed, 
 assume any degree of importance before the days when the in- 
 vention of gunpowder and long-distance arms brought about a 
 radical change in the science of warfare. To show the effect of 
 gun-fire in a picture, or to depict the conditions of a battle in which 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
death is dealt out at long range, it is necessary to indicate aerial 
 perspective, atmosphere, smoke, the nature of the ground, cover 
 and exposure. It was a long time though, before the increased 
 appreciation of the beauty and emotional effect of nature, together 
 Avith that gradual improvement in firearms which led to what might 
 be called the " invisible battle," where artillery fire is trained 
 across mountain ranges upon a hidden enemy, and where spy-glasses 
 are needed to detect the movement of troops, turned the battle 
 picture into animated landscape pure and simple. 
 
 Many are the phases that lie between the classic Greek and the 
 modern Impressionist idea of the artistic treatment of war. To 
 give a complete history of this evolution, would be beyond the 
 scope of this sketch. Let it suffice to indicate a few of the landmarks 
 which illustrate how the successive changes in the conduct and 
 psychology of war are mirrored in the art of each period. Each of 
 these changes found adequate expression in art. It is in the nature 
 of things that the business of war became ever less picturesque and 
 " decorative" with the increased use of scientific appliances, which 
 reached its climax in the present gigantic struggle of the nations. 
 The artistic language of the past had no idiom that could adequately 
 express the grim, hard, mechanical character of a war in which the 
 decisive element is the efficiency of laboratories, foundries and 
 engineering works. Only in the often quite unintelligible experi- 
 ments of Cubism and Futurism could be found the germ of such an 
 idiom. C. R. W. Nevinson, who, alone perhaps among living British 
 painters, has grasped the significance of this mighty machine war 
 from the artist's point of view, does not state his impressions and 
 emotional experiences in terms of Cubism or of Futurism ; but the 
 intellectual curiosity which, in times of peace, had attracted him 
 towards all rebellious movements, enables him now to effect a 
 happy compromise between illustration and geometric abstraction, 
 and to interpret with modern means the spirit and significance of 
 modern war. 
 
 But let us return to our landmarks in the evolution of the 
 war picture. Paolo Uccello is one that stands out conspicuously. 
 His famous battle pictures at the National Gallery, the Louvre, 
 and the Uffizi, reflect the spirit of the age of chivalry, when the 
 battle was a kind of intensified tourney, a magnificent display of 
 shining armour and waving plumes and rich trappings. War was 
 a great decorative pageant, accompanied by comparatively trifling 
 loss of life and limb. As such it appeared to Paolo Uccello. Rich 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
patterns, gay colour and decorative effectiveness were his chief 
 concern. The newly discovered laws of perspective and fore- 
 shortening gave him as much pleasure as a new toy to a child. The 
 decorative aim is everywhere in evidence, in the landscape back- 
 ground as much as in the gay confusion of the joust-like clash of 
 arms. 
 
 Uccello is the typical quattrocentist. Pier dei Franeeschi — at 
 Arezzo — and many others in Tuscany and the rest of Italy treated 
 war more or less in the same decorative spirit. In the next century, 
 pageantry is replaced by the drama of battle, the flat pattern by 
 carefully studied light and shade, the conventional background by 
 atmospheric landscape. Leonardo's and Michelangelo's great battle 
 pictures have perished, but Leonardo has jotted down in his note- 
 books his ideas on the manner of representing a battle. " You 
 will," he says, " first of all make the smoke of artillery, which 
 mingles with the air, together with the dust whirled up by the 
 movement of horses and warriors ..." Then follows a vivid 
 description of atmospheric effects, of typical gesture and facial 
 expression, of characteristic scenes to be witnessed on the battle- 
 field, which it is the artist's business faithfully to record. Nothing 
 is omitted. The bewildering confusion of the battlefield is systema- 
 tized and brought into artistic cohesion. Raphael was not a scholar 
 and thinker like that great universal genius Leonardo da Vinci, but 
 his " Battle of Constantine," at the Vatican, is the most perfect 
 example extant of this orderly confusion — chaos rhythmically 
 arranged by supreme art. 
 
 Landscape, from being a mere accessory, has now become as 
 important almost, pictorially, as the action. In Titian's " Battle 
 of Cadore," a famous picture which has been completely destroyed, 
 but is known to us from an early engraving, a further change may 
 be noted : the landscape has become paramount. A well-known 
 writer on art has aptly described it as "a landscape with figures 
 in violent action." 
 
 An altogether different conception of the battle picture originates 
 with the declining days of the Renaissance. The literary and 
 historical interest become of supreme importance. The artist is 
 deeply interested in questions of tactics and military science. It 
 is his ambition to represent the tactical evolutions of field battle 
 or siege. He becomes a chronicler. Vermeyen's series of cartoons 
 for the Prado tapestries, depicting the Conquest of Tunis by 
 Charles V, are vast panoramic views, showing every detail of the 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
military operations, the landing of the troops, the disposition of 
 the different units, the attack and defence, ships, towers, fortifica- 
 tions, cannon, war engines, tents, and all other paraphernalia of 
 campaigning. In similar fashion the Siege of Florence by the 
 Prince of Orange is unrolled ^before our eyes by Vasari on the 
 walls of the Palazzo Vecchio. The same prolific painter's " Siege 
 of Pisa " and " Battle of Marciano " are a compromise between the 
 classic manner of Raphael and the new " tactical " battle picture, 
 in so far as great prominence is given to the group of fighters 
 (disguised as ancient Romans) in the foreground, whilst the middle 
 and far distances show the tactical movements of siege and battle. 
 What Vasari and, to a lesser extent, Vermeyen, managed to 
 wed within the frame of one picture — the orderly operations of 
 masses and the exciting hand-to-hand encounter of individuals — is 
 divorced by the battle painters of the seventeenth century. With 
 increased realism in the rendering of the landscape, which debars 
 the artist from accentuating individual action in the distance, where 
 the advancing lines and squares of troops appear as masses, the 
 battle picture was bound to become more immobile, static and 
 topographic. To make up for this loss of movement, the artists of 
 that period — notably Van der Meulen and the other chroniclers of 
 the campaign of the grand monarque, or, in Spain, Pereda and 
 Leonardo, who decorated the Sala de las Comedias in the Buen 
 Retiro palace — loved to show on an eminence in the immediate 
 foreground the splendidly apparelled staff, with the king or com- 
 mander-in-chief on a prancing horse, watching or directing the 
 battle in the plain below. The actual battle has now been moved 
 to the distance. The foreground is filled by a stately parade of the 
 guiding intellect. The battle leaders are no longer engaged in fierce 
 encounters, but witness the spectacle in comfort. It is the period 
 towards the end of which the Prince de Soubise set out for his 
 campaigns with an endless retinue of servants, cooks, and baggage 
 waggons laden with everything that was needed for the uninter- 
 rupted enjoyment of the luxuries which formed the setting to 
 court life in days of peace. 
 
 In striking contrast to this tactical battle picture, with its 
 comparative lack of movement, though contemporary with it is 
 the once highly esteemed work of the feverishly impetuous painters 
 of cavalry meUes. Salvator Rosa, Wouvermans, Borgognone 
 Parrocel, and others, delighted in the inextricable confusion of the 
 mipossible violent compact of mounted soldiers. Horses and riders 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
are chaotically mixed up, the ranks penetrating each other in 
 defiance of certified facts. Everything is in a whirl of furious 
 movement, though sheer lack of space would make such movement 
 absohitely impossible. The sense of order which underlies the 
 carefully considered confusion of, say, Raphael's " Battle of Con- 
 stantine " is utterly lost. Everything is tangled, mixed up, and 
 disjointed. 
 
 The wave of enthusiasm that carried the arms of Napoleon from 
 victory to victory was bovmd to leave its mark upon the art com- 
 memorating the achievements of the world's greatest strategic 
 genius. The personal clement becomes of supreme importance. 
 Gros, Gerard, Giraudct, Charlet, to mention only the most prominent 
 among the painters of the Napoleonic legend, Avere as much inspired 
 by the emperor's personality as were his generals and his armies. 
 " Vive Napoleon ! Vive I'Empereur ! " might be used as a general 
 title for all these pictures in which everything is centred around the 
 figure of the national hero. The sufferings and horrors of war are 
 forgotten in the all-pervading intoxication with the glory of victory. 
 Everybody is fired by the same impulse. Even the wounded and 
 the dying forget their sad plight and join in acclaiming their idol. 
 The heroic gesture of David's pseudo-classicism is not altogether 
 absent, but it is almost justified by the epic grandeur of the theme. 
 
 A sole voice, far ahead of its time in this as in many other 
 respects, is raised in protest against this glorification of wholesale 
 slaughter for love of country or greed of conquest. The grim, 
 tragic side of war, the unspeakable sufferings of a people under the 
 invader's heel, are shown with trenchant, relentless realism by the 
 Spaniard Goya in his series of " Los Desastres de la Guerra." Here, 
 for the first time, war is not treated from the point of view of 
 pageantry, heroism, or national self-glorification. It is an exposure 
 of its naked horrors and of the misery it carries in its train. Yet 
 Goya's indictment is not directed against war in general as much 
 as against the outrageous conduct of his country's enemy. The 
 condemnation of war on principle was left to a much more recent 
 artist. It was the Russian, Wassilj Veresehtschagin, who first used 
 his brush, as his compatriot Tolstoi had used his pen, to attack 
 militarism and the suffering inflicted by it on the people. He shows 
 war shorn of its glory and glamour. Death and desolation every- 
 where, frozen carcases, starvation, the groaning agony of the 
 wounded, the misery of the civil popxilation. With cutting irony 
 he dedicated his painting of a gruesome pyramid of skulls " To all 
 
 [ 11 ] 
 
the Conquerors of the World." Whatever may be thought of him 
 as an artist, his pictures must be regarded as powerful sermons 
 against war. 
 
 Vereschtschagin's humanitarian outlook was the natural conse- 
 quence of the democratic tendencies of the later nineteenth century. 
 The academic school, it is true, continued to feed on the traditions 
 of the past. The spectacular side of war and the heroic gesture 
 may even to this day be found in many an imaginative academic 
 reconstruction of battles of the past. But whilst such things may 
 achieve some kind of ephemeral popularity, they are of no perma- 
 nent value for the history of art. Even Meissonier, once idolized for 
 the miniature-like precision of his details, is gradually finding his 
 modest level. The modern connoisseur is inclined to endorse 
 Courbet's gibe that in Meissonier's pictures " everything is of iron 
 except the cuirasses." 
 
 The artists who remained in touch with contemporary life, and 
 whose work has to be regarded as the expression of the spirit of 
 their age, had ceased to look upon war through rose-coloured 
 spectacles. The defeat of France in the war of 1870-71 was perhaps 
 one of the chief contributory causes. Paris had become the world's 
 centre of artistic life and the fountain-head of artistic inspiration. 
 The events of the disastrous war claimed the attention of the 
 French painters, who had to solve an entirely new problem. For 
 the first time the war painter had to deal with defeat, instead of 
 devoting his talent to the commemoration of victory and to the 
 glorification of those to whose stragetic genius the victory was due. 
 
 As a natural consequence, the army leader and his staff disappear 
 from the picture, and the fighting man, the unknown son of the 
 people, who has to bear the brunt of fatigue and danger and 
 suffering, enters into his own. The spectator is no longer placed in 
 the vicinity of the staff to watch the tactical evolutions of the battle 
 or to witness the wave of enthusiasm that makes the victorious 
 troops acclaim the leader. He is taken into the heart of the battle, 
 or rather into a detached corner of the scattered fighting, to witness 
 some particular episode with all its distressing details of butchery 
 and suffering. Of this nature are the battle pictures by Detaille, 
 Neuville, Morot, and the other countless painters who have recorded 
 the incidents of the Franco-Prussian war. 
 
 There are other reasons which make it necessary for the artist 
 of more recent days to devote himself to the episode. With the 
 improvement of modern engines of destruction which deal out 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
death across vast stretches of country, war has lost much of its 
 picturesqueness. The painter who would attempt to represent the 
 panorama of a battle would be reduced to landscape painting pure 
 and simple. Resplendent armour and uniforms have been abolished, 
 and everything is done to make the fighting invisible. The very 
 colours vised for active service uniform, khaki, " field-grey," and so 
 forth, are chosen with this end in view. It is not without significance 
 that in the majority of the Boer War pictures — that is to say in 
 those that were painted by eye-witnesses, and not made up from 
 descriptive material — the artist has confined himself to depicting 
 the South African veldt, with, perhaps, in the foreground some 
 khaki- clad soldiers who at a distance are almost undistinguishable 
 from the parched soil on which they tread ; whilst the actual 
 fighting, the progress of the battle, is indicated by a few puffs of 
 smoke over the far horizon. 
 
 If the difficulties of finding adequate terms for the artistic 
 interpretation of modern war under these changed conditions had 
 increased enormously, they appeared to have become insuperable 
 when, in August, 1914, Europe was plunged into a war which, 
 spreading over an ever more extended area, soon assumed pro- 
 portions so gigantic as to make the most sanguinary conflicts of 
 former days seem mere child's play. Never before had war been 
 conducted simultaneously on land and on sea, in the air and under 
 the ocean. Never before had the entire energy and inventive 
 ingenuity of the great States of Europe been so completely con- 
 centrated on a vast work of destruction. Never before had individual 
 heroism been rendered so puny by comparison with the vast 
 results achieved by mechanical science and by the mobilization 
 of the destructive forces of nature. Man, of course, directs the 
 machine, but it is the machine that is the decisive factor. We may 
 be thrilled by individual acts of devotion and bravery and self- 
 sacrifice, but the story of this war is the story of gigantic shells, 
 high explosives, submarines, torpedoes, aeroplanes and airships, 
 poison gas and liquid fire, motor-cars and lorries and " tanks," 
 trenches extending over hundreds of miles, dug-outs and barbed 
 wire, searchlights, field telephones and wireless telegraphy.'; .^. i 
 
 It is fairly obvious that the ordinary representational manner 
 of painting is wholly inadequate for the interpretation of this 
 tremendous conflict in which all the forces of nature have to be 
 conquered and pressed into service against the opposing enemy. 
 A more synthetic method is needed to express the essential 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
character of this cataclysmic war, in which the very earth is dis- 
 embowelled and rocky mountain summits are blown sky-high to 
 bury all life under the falling debris. How could even a faint echo 
 of such things find its way into that species of enlarged and coloured 
 newspaper illustration that continues to represent the art of the 
 battle painter on the walls of the Royal Academy ? If there was 
 a possible solution of the problem, it could not be offered by 
 " official " art, but by the rebellious experimentalists for whom 
 modern art began with Cezanne and who were waging a relentless 
 war against all academic conventions. 
 
 One need not go so far as to accept Professor Michael Sadler's 
 theory that the Great War is the outcome of the same restlessness 
 and seething discontent that led to the expressionist and futurist 
 revolution of the twentieth century. But the fact remains that 
 there is now, as there has always been, an intimate connection 
 between life in all its manifestations and vital art. Political and 
 social upheavals are generally accompanied by a change in the 
 aesthetic outlook, though the change in the aesthetic outlook is 
 never the cause of the upheaval. New horizons are opened to 
 human thought, and new forms have to be found to express these 
 thoughts and emotions. It was inevitable that the painter who could 
 successfully grapple with the unprecedented conditions of modern 
 warfare should be an adherent of the modern school, an artist who 
 has assimilated the theories of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and 
 Futurism, rejecting the too frequent extravagant exaggerations, and 
 retaining all that could help him in solving the problem by which 
 he was faced. One solitary artist of the independent group has had 
 the courage to undertake the inspiring task. C. R. W. Nevinson 
 stands alone, in England, as the painter of modern war. 
 ***** 
 
 C. R. W. Nevinson was born on August 13th, 1889, the son of 
 Henry Woodd Nevinson, the distinguished author and war corres- 
 pondent. Destined to take up the profession of an engineer, he 
 received his early education at University College School and at 
 Uppingham. But from the outset he failed to achieve any distinc- 
 tion, except at dra^ving, for which he showed a marked aptitude 
 and an inclination which was not to be denied. He was given his 
 earliest tuition in art by the late John FuUeylove, whose authori- 
 tative architectural drawing and disHke of " sloppy modern work " 
 first interested the budding artist in draughtsmanship. 
 
 In 1907, Nevinson entered the St. John's Wood School of Art, 
 
 [ 14 ] 
 
as a preparatory step towards gaining admission to the Royal 
 Academy Schools, but after a few terms he transferred his allegiance 
 to the Slade School, where Henry Tonks and Frederick Brown 
 expounded the theory of drawing, as drawing was understood by 
 the great Ingres. The Slade School was then, in 1909-10, attracting 
 considerable attention among the initiated by the abundance of 
 original talent its excellent teaching brought to fruition. Among 
 Nevinson's fellow- students were Mark Gertlcr, John Currie, Light- 
 foot, Spenser, Allinson, Nash, and Wadsworth, whose keenness and 
 relentless student criticism upheld all that was best of Slade 
 traditions. In view of the fact that the ignorant section of the 
 public and, alas ! not a few intolerant professional painters, are 
 wont to ascribe to incompetent draughtsmanship any deliberate 
 departure from photographic truth for the sake of increased ex- 
 pressiveness, it is worthy of notice that all these artists, Nevinson 
 included, have passed with conspicuous success through the severe 
 discipline of sensitive drawing. It is neither ignorance, nor care- 
 lessness, that leads to bold simplifications and wilful distortions, 
 but the desire to invest form with a significance which can never 
 be obtained from literal accuracy. And at the basis of it all is 
 sure and often masterly draughtsmanship. 
 
 When Nevinson exhibited his first picture at the Friday Club, 
 a view of a factory, he was under the spell of Monet and the French 
 Impressionists. The first exhibition of the Post-Impressionists at 
 the Grafton Galleries opened a new world to him. The experience 
 was terribly upsetting. All his former idols were shattered, and 
 Van Gogh enthroned in their place. Cezanne he regarded with a 
 half suspicious admiration. But, for the time being, he continued 
 to paint industrial cities in the Impressionist manner, with, perhaps, 
 a little bolder accentuation of form and volume. One of his last 
 pictures in this style is now in the possession of the Manchester 
 Corporation Art Gallery. 
 
 Keenly responsive to fresh suggestions and new influences, 
 Nevinson was next attracted by the Neo-Primitivism of his friends 
 Gertler and Currie. The group of young enthusiasts, painted in the 
 primitive manner by John Currie, created a mild sensation at the 
 New English Art Club of 1911, at which exhibition Nevinson was 
 represented by a portrait of the artist treated in the clear-cut, 
 decorative manner of the early Italians. The picture was much 
 admired and elicited cordial praise from such severe judges as 
 Augustus John and William Rothenstein. 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
In the following year, 1912, Nevinson left London to resume his 
 studies in Paris at Julien's and subsequently at the Cercle Russe. 
 The new milieu soon made him shake off the earlier influences. He 
 was turning his back upon the Italian Primitives as Avell as upon 
 Ingres, Rembrandt, Goya, Claude and Turner, whose works he 
 had always been studying, and to all of whom he had in his earlier 
 student days paid the tribute of imitation. His first step in Paris 
 was a frank return to Impressionism ; but this Impressionism began 
 to be modified by an ever-increasing interest in structural design 
 as expounded by Cezanne. He became deeply interested in the 
 experiments of the Post-Impressionists Marchant and Derain, whose 
 work made him gradually understand the abstract forms of Picasso. 
 
 Back again in London, in the spring of 1913, Nevinson, at the 
 invitation of Wyndham Lewis, with whom he had just become 
 acquainted, exhibited his first " geometric " landscape with the 
 group of art rebels who had collected round Roger Fry, the sponsor 
 of Post-Impressionism in England. In the meanwhile London had 
 been set agape with amazement by the Italian Futurists' display 
 of their violent and bewildering break with all tradition in art. 
 The term Futurism is even now so indiscriminately used as a con- 
 venient generalization of all art that aims at synthesis and abstrac- 
 tion that a brief explanation of the Futurists' real aims may not be 
 altogether uncalled for. 
 
 The chief factor of Futurism is the introduction of dynamism 
 into painting. If we speak of " movement " in a picture, it is only 
 a relative term. It means that the static, immobile figures in a 
 picture are shown in interrupted movement, but they remain static 
 all the same. The Futurist, by depicting on one canvas the successive 
 stages of movement and by showing the displacement of the objects 
 in space which is the visual effect of real movement, tries to convey 
 a dynamic sensation or impression. The result is, more often than 
 not, mere kaleidoscopic confusion which leaves the spectator in 
 complete ignorance of the artist's intention, and fails, therefore, 
 in its function as a work of art, since it transmits neither emotion 
 nor even sensation. Only in a few exceptional cases did the Italian 
 Futurists manage to convey the desired impression. Nobody who 
 visited the Sackville Gallery in 1912 is likely to forget the extra- 
 ordinarily vivid sense of ballroom brightness and exuberantly gay 
 movement conveyed by Severini's large " Pan-pan Dance at the 
 Monico." Viewed closely, the picture bore the closest resemblance 
 to a patchwork quilt made up of triangles and other geometric 
 
 [ 16 ] 
 
figures in primary hues and black. At the right distance it created 
 the precise effect avowedly aimed at by the artist : " Sensation of 
 the bustle and hubbub created by the Tsiganes, the champagne- 
 sodden crowd, the perverse dance of the professionals, the clashing 
 of coloiu's and laughter at the famous night-tavern at Montmartre." 
 
 Nevinson had seen this picture, which at once overwhelmed 
 him with interest in the Futurist propaganda. He now met Gino 
 Severini at lunch with Clive Bell and Roger Fry, and felt magneti- 
 cally attracted by the Italian artist, with whom he shared that love 
 of mechanism, industrial towns, and all modern activity, which is 
 part of the Futurist gospel. The two young enthusiasts became 
 warm friends, and Nevinson accompanied Severini back to Paris, 
 where the Italian introduced him to the other members of the 
 Cubist and Futurist groups. 
 
 Nevinson, always receptive to exciting influences, became a 
 Futurist, x^s such he exhibited his first picture, "Le Train de 
 Luxe," at the Dore Gallery in the autumn of 1913. At that time 
 Marinctti himself, the founder and leader of the Futurist movement, 
 came to London to give a sei'ies of lectures and to organize the 
 scattered forces of English rebel art. The years just preceding the 
 outbreak of the war were a time of great enthusiasms and great 
 squabbles and jealousies. Marinetti, whose fiery eloquence and 
 tremendously vital personality were such, that he could hypnotize 
 an intellectual audience into the temporary belief that a kind of 
 grotesque jumping-jaek, made up of firewood, rags, cigarette-boxes 
 and the like, was a greater work of art than Rodin's " Grand 
 Penseur," actually succeeded for a while in infusing the various 
 little groups of independent artists with some esprit de corps. 
 Nevinson and Wyndham Lewis arranged a dinner in Marinetti's 
 honour, which was marked by scenes of genuine enthusiasm. But 
 the old jealousies were soon at work again. The little groups split 
 into new groups. The London group seceded from the Roger Fry 
 band. A new " Rebel Art Centre " was started, with Nevinson, 
 Wyndham Lewis, and Wadsworth as leading spirits. 
 
 Marinetti returned in the summer of 1914, and issued, together 
 with Nevinson, a manifesto on " Vital English Art." The mani- 
 festo pleaded for a strong, virile and anti-sentimental English Art, 
 strengthened by physical and moral courage, a fearless desire of 
 adventure, a worship of strength, with sport as an essential element. 
 It declared war, among other things, upon the worship of tradition, 
 the pessimistic, sceptical and narrow views of the English public, 
 
 [ 17 ] 
 
the sickly revivals of medisevalism, sestheticism, and most existing 
 art institutions. But it also condemned " the old grotesque ideal 
 of genius — drunken, filthy, ragged, outcast ; drunkenness the 
 synonym of Art ; Chelsea the Montmartre of London ; the post- 
 Rossettis with long hair imder the sombrero, and other passeist 
 filth." 
 
 This was, to say the least, ill-considered. The description bore 
 too close a resemblance to some of Marinetti's English followers. 
 The assumption of a kind of leadership by Nevinson, implied by his 
 signature at the foot of this bomb-shell manifesto, was also resented 
 by his fellow-members of the Rebel Art Centre. The Rebels 
 rebelled once more and repudiated the manifesto. They became 
 violent anti-Marinettists and anti-Fviturists, and finally proceeded 
 to the inevitable formation of a new group. " Vorticism " was 
 born, but Nevinson was not invited to the ftmction. He remained 
 practically the sole British follower of the Italian Futurists, and 
 devoted himself heart and soul to the construction of those kaleido- 
 scopic puzzle pictures which endeavoured to introduce dynamism 
 into pictorial art. Prophetic foresight was scarcely needed on the 
 part of those who had followed the young artist's development, to 
 recognize that he was passing through a transitory phase which 
 afforded him, probably, more amusement than real satisfaction, 
 although there can be no doubt as to the seriousness of his interest 
 in the problem. 
 
 * H: * * * 
 
 This was the phase at which Nevinson had arrived when the 
 war cloud burst over Europe in August, 1914. The praise of war 
 had always been part of the violent Futurist gospel. Marinetti had 
 loudly declared that he considered the hypothesis of the amicable 
 fusion of the peoples an antiquated idea, and that he found in war 
 alone the hygienics of the world. Indeed, the bulk of Futurist 
 literature was devoted to the glorification of war and of all the 
 mechanical appliances, productive of noise and speed, that are 
 essential for the conduct of modern war. 
 
 As a true disciple of his master, Nevinson could not miss his 
 chance to experience the emotions of war at first hand. Long 
 before the mtroduction of compulsory service, that is to say in 
 the autumn of 1914, he joined the colours and went to Flanders as 
 a motor mechanic and ambulance driver. " My work," he stated 
 in the foreword to the catalogue of his exhibition of war pictures 
 at the Leicester Galleries, " took me everywhere between the coast 
 
 [ 18 ] 
 
and Ypres along the French, British and Belgian lines. Later I 
 became attached to the French Army, and I was glad, since it is 
 to France — with her high standard of criticism, her interest in 
 modern art and her appreciation of it — that I owe most of my 
 artistic education, and it is her influence by which I am chiefly 
 prompted. Subsequently, owing to ill health, I worked as a hospital 
 orderly both in Dunkerque and London until, in January, 1916, I 
 was invalided out of the army owing to rheumatic fever." 
 
 Here we have, in plain words, the modest extent of Nevinson's 
 military career — hard work, exposure that led to a breakdown in 
 health, and little or no occasion to acquire military distinction. But 
 there was compensation in the collecting of rich experience. 
 Probably the very nature of his work as ambulance driver gave 
 him a better opportunity for observing, for gathering impressions 
 and storing up mental notes, than he would have found in any other 
 capacity. His life was not passed between the trench and the rest 
 camp, but he was able to roam along the whole fighting line. If he 
 missed the excitement of bayonet charges, bombing, and sniping, 
 of attack and of defence, he had his fill of the horrors of war at 
 first-aid stations and base hospitals. He could study the scarred, 
 desolate countryside, watch the effect of exploding shells, which 
 must have been peculiarly fascinating to an artist who, as a con- 
 firmed Futurist, was accustomed to search at all times and in 
 inanimate objects for " force lines," that is to say the lines inherent 
 in each object which " reveal how it would resolve itself, were it to 
 follow the tendencies of its forces." He lived in a Futurist atmosphere 
 of speed and noise and concentrated energy. And everywhere he 
 could see the machine at work. 
 
 But the outcome of it all was not what the artist had pre- 
 sumably expected in his first wave of entluisiasm. He returned 
 with many illusions shattered. He had witnessed too much suffering 
 and misery to believe any longer in war as the " hygienics of the 
 world." From this side a breach had been made in his Futurist 
 entrenchment, and with this shaking of his faith came the loss of 
 that defiant gaiety and wholesale rejection of all former artistic 
 conventions which, before his departure for the front, had led him 
 to paint a London crowd on the day of the declaration of war in 
 the jig-saw puzzle manner of Severini's "Pan-pan" and in the 
 colours of the Union Jack. 
 
 Yet, in the pictures he has painted since his return from 
 Flanders and France, he has not altogether broken away from 
 
 [ 19 ] 
 
Futurism, although he has rejected its extravagances and excesses. 
 Through a tactful compromise between geometric abstraction and 
 frank — sometimes brutally frank — illustration, Nevinson has done 
 more towards reconciling the public to Futurist theories and aims 
 than had been so far achieved by the most violent propaganda. I 
 have had occasion, more than once, to discuss Nevinson's war 
 pictures, at the time of their collective exhibition at the Leicester 
 Galleries, with soldiers and officers who had been to the front, and 
 who generally preceded their remarks by a frank confession that 
 they knew nothing whatever about art. " But," they generally 
 proceeded, " these pictures tell you more about the war, as it 
 actually is, than any of the photographs and reproductions of 
 drawings which fill our illustrated journals." The angles and 
 planes in Nevinson's pictures, which are as far removed as could be 
 from photographic truth, have nothing strange or bewildering even 
 to the lay mind, and convey a sense of movement and volume 
 which could never be suggested by ordinary means. 
 
 This modified Futurism, this compromise between the purely 
 representational and a carefully thought-out geometric convention, 
 is explained by Nevinson himself in the introductory note to his 
 catalogue, in which he makes his profession of artistic faith : 
 
 " With some exceptions I still prefer to give in my pictures an 
 abstract, dynamic, and mental impression rather than a concrete, 
 static or optical. But it will be seen from the later examples of my 
 painting that (though working within a geometrical convention) I 
 free myself from all pedantic and academic theories of ' Post ' 
 or ' Neo,' as well as from the deadening influence of the idolatry 
 to ' Primitives ' and ' Old Masters,' which has lately cavised so 
 many enfeebled and emasculated revivals. 
 
 " Every artist of living force has always been and must be an 
 outgrowth and spokesman of his time. It is impossible to express 
 the scientific and mechanical spirit of this twentieth- century war 
 with the languishing or obsolete symbolism of Mediaeval and Classic 
 Art. 
 
 " In the years just before the war the accusation of decadence 
 was frequently brought against the young men and the artists of 
 the^day. No charge has proved more false. 
 
 "Already long before the war young artists in the Latin 
 countries and England were seeking a wider inspiration than in 
 the sickly worship of the nude and the over-sensual broodings of 
 our elders which showed themselves in the literature and art of the 
 
 [ 20 ] 
 
Yellow Book, in ' advanced dramas,' and in some of the Pre- 
 Raphaelites, a tendency largely due to trivial lives possessing no 
 other conception of adventure or emotion than sex. 
 
 " The intensity of the present time is producing a vital art in 
 England. In theatres and picture-shop windows, it is true, an 
 insipid and sentimental reaction against surrounding horrors is 
 obvious, but a vital art may be trusted to overcome it. For the 
 pressure of necessity is already compelling us to take up our natural 
 position as pioneers in literature, art, science and industry — a 
 position of initiative which over-prosperity, self-content, and 
 insularity had tempted us comfortably to forego." 
 
 This is still the defiant, vigorous language characteristic of 
 Futurist manifestos, but the work thus introduced is nevertheless 
 a compromise. Not, indeed, the compromise of cowardice or ill 
 success, but a compromise that has its root in the sober recognition 
 of the futility of experiments unintelligible to everybody but the 
 artist himself. Art is essentially social in its function. It is a 
 language for the communication of emotions, or, at least, as some 
 of the extreme modernists will have it, of sensations. If the artist 
 invents a language of his own, which remains mere gibberish to 
 everybody but himself, his effort remains futile. It is not art, 
 however deep may have been the emotion he failed to transmit. 
 Nevinson, in his war pictures, even where they approach most 
 closely to complete abstraction, is never unintelligible. Moreover, 
 he has undertaken himself to educate his audience, to lead them 
 step by step to an understanding of his aims. He begins with 
 absolute realism, which might almost be called photographic, were 
 it not for the ruthless elimination of all unessential detail and a 
 Cezannesque insistence on significant form. Take the picture 
 entitled " A Taube." The lifeless body of a child is lying face 
 downwards in a street devastated by a bomb explosion. The wall 
 of the house at the back is scarred and cracked by the stones 
 hurled against it from the torn pavement. One of the green 
 shutters is wrenched from its hinges. No sign of life anywhere in 
 this scene of destruction, which is painted with cruel realism and 
 without a vestige of sentimentality. There is rude strength in the 
 simple rendering of the forms which are blocked out with severe 
 emphasis. The child is ungainly and unattractive and does not 
 enlist sympathy through innocent charm. Nevinson needs no such 
 mawkish means to express his horror of this murder from the 
 clouds. The picture is grim, undiluted tragedy. 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
From this straightforward illustration the spectator was led by 
 almost imperceptible degrees to the geometric abstraction of 
 "Bm-sting Shells," which might be described, in Futm'ist language, 
 as the liberation of the latent " force lines." This is by no means 
 an impression of the usual effect of shells exploding in the air, but 
 a coloured diagram of the direction taken by the sudden disinte- 
 gration of solid matter. The movement is at the same time spiral 
 and radiating ; and colour is used in arbitrary fashion to give the 
 sensation of terrific violence. The intermediate stages between 
 these two extremes explained themselves so clearly, that the 
 ordinary visitor to the gallery experienced no difficulty in under- 
 standing even the most abstract of the pictures shown. 
 
 On a previous occasion, at the London Salon in the spring of 
 1916, Nevinson had exhibited three pictures the very naming of 
 which showed a didactic intention. Exhibited side by side, they 
 were catalogued as " an illustration," " an interpretation," and " an 
 abstraction." Nevinson obviously meant to demonstrate the man- 
 ner in which pictorial art gradually emerges from its bondage to 
 the representation of facts. If he did not altogether succeed in this 
 endeavour, it was because his illustration, " The Mitrailleuse," was 
 too geometric to have anything in common with what is generally 
 understood by illustration ; whilst his abstraction, " Violence," 
 did not attain to the complete detachment from recognizable 
 form which marks the improvisations of, say, Kandinsky. 
 Nevinson was not sufficiently sure of himself. He resorted to 
 the expedient of introducing a clearly recognizable gun, so that 
 the language of form and colour should be aided by literary 
 association. 
 
 If any individual picture of Nevinson's war series had to be 
 chosen in support of the claim that Nevinson is the painter, par 
 excellence, of modern war, none could serve the purpose better than 
 this " Illustration : La Mitrailleuse," v/hich has wisely been 
 acquired by the Contemporary Art Society to become eventually 
 the property of the nation. It has impress^ed with the same power 
 critics as temperamental as Mr. Lewis Hind and as cool and 
 objective as Mr. Walter Sickert. And each of them, in his own 
 characteristic way, gives utterance to the same idea. "This is 
 modern war," says Mr. Lewis Hind, "the man a machine, the 
 machine is almost a man, no hint of humanity or pity about it, 
 just war, the object of which is to kill." And Mr. Sickert, in 
 the Burlington Magazine : " Mr. Nevinson's ' Mitrailleuse ' will 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
to 
 
 probably remain the most authoritative and concentrated utterance 
 on the war in the history of painting." 
 
 This crowded, compact composition takes tlie spectator into a 
 timbered pit, the narrow space of whicli is filled by four French 
 soldiers, one dead and three alive, and a machine gun. One of the 
 soldiers looks with intense horror on his dead comrade ; another 
 has concentrated his fierce attention upon the mitrailleuse he is 
 serving. His hand, glued, at it were, to the machine, seems to form 
 part of it. It has an air of being cut out of steel as hard as that of 
 the trench-helmet which protects his head. The little glimpse of 
 grey sky above is cut into cloisons by a network of strong barbed 
 wire. 
 
 Any description of the svibject matter of this picture seems to 
 justify the artist's choice of a title : an illustration. It might be 
 just an episode of trench warfare, a snapshot of an incident of 
 fighting. But " La Mitrailleuse " is far more than that, It is, 
 indeed, an approach towards a synthesis of modern war, steely, 
 grim, crviel, dominated by mechanical appliances. The death- 
 dealing machinery and the men behind it are one. The angles and 
 curves of the gun are continued or echoed in the soldiers' faces and 
 uniforms. Everything is rigid and tense and horrible. The grim- 
 ness of this scene, Avhere death and life are thrown together indis- 
 solubly, is again vmrelieved by human sentiment. Machines know 
 no pity, and these French soldiers are part of their machine. Even 
 the man who stares at the corpse is pitiless. His geometric features 
 express naught but frozen horror. The other men, mere screws in 
 the human war engine, fulfil their function oblivious of the presence 
 of death in the ghastly pit. This, indeed, is " just war, the object 
 of which is to kill." 
 
 An even more complete fusion of the man and the machine is 
 to be found in the "Portrait of a Motor Ambulance Driver." The 
 driver has almost ceased to be a man. He is merely the controlling 
 force. His body is rigid ; his hand clutches the steering wheel ; 
 his eyes are glued upon the road ; he is an integral part of the car. 
 And in his colour, as in his line, Nevinson insists upon this unity. 
 Indeed, colour only exists to him for this purpose. He does not use 
 it decoratively. His pictures are too cold, too steely, to have any 
 value as decoration, although they are never without a fine rhythm 
 of line. He probes into the essence of his subject and pays no 
 attention to quality of paint or pleasing arrangement of colour. 
 Some of these war pictures suggest a chisel rather than brush and 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
pigment. To appreciate tiiem properly, one has to clear one's mind 
 of all preconceived notions as to what a picture should be. 
 
 Not always, though, is Nevinson so disdainful of pictorial 
 quality. In " Searchlights," the buildings silhouetted below the 
 night sky with its shafts of bright lights intersecting in every 
 direction, are painted with real tenderness and appreciation of tone 
 values. The paint is handled with an affectionate regard for its 
 quality, and not laid on roughly as though nothing mattered but 
 the form expressed by it. At the same time, there is no attempt at 
 representing a realistic impression of searchlights piercing the night- 
 sky with streaks that start sharp and clear, then gradually lose their 
 hard edges, and finally vanish in the darkness. The beams of light 
 are treated just like diagrams. They widen with increasing distance 
 from their source ; but they remain practically the same in intensity 
 right through, and lose none of the sharpness of their silhouette. 
 
 In another painting, " Pursuing a Taube," Nevinson not only 
 endeavours successfully to convey a sense of atmosphere, but he 
 actually takes delight in colour for its own sake. The picture is 
 almost " pretty." Its pleasing character is the more commendable, 
 as it is likely to reconcile the public to an experiment in pictorial 
 dynamism which they might otherwise refuse to accept. The 
 method adopted for expressing the rapid movement of the flying 
 machines — a British biplane and two monoplanes in pursuit of 
 a German Taube — may best be described as cinematographic, 
 successive positions of the moving objects being indicated in the line 
 of the flight, the outlines of the aeroplanes becoming more blurred 
 as they recede from the most advanced position of the machines. 
 The illusion of movement is truly extraordinary. It is inconceivable 
 that anything like it could have been expressed by any other means. 
 It almost suggests the possibility of gauging the rate of progress 
 and to note the difference in speed between the Taube and its 
 pursuers. 
 
 Nevinson delights in experiments. Having mastered the formula 
 of stating movement by this species of pictorial cinematography, he 
 sets about finding another solution of the same problem. " Before 
 the Storm " is the title of another painting showing a biplane in 
 swift flight. The picture has scarcely anything in common with 
 the earlier " Pursuing a Taube." It has none of the flicker of the 
 film. The clouds are not atmospheric, but rather like solid matter 
 cut into cubic and spheric shapes around a luminous opening which 
 suggests immense space and height. In perfect relation to the 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
cubic planes of the clouds, and as though it were part of them, is 
 one the dark edge of which is like an extension of the biplane's tail, 
 indicating the angle of the flight, the soaring towards the opening 
 into the infinity of space. It is not too much to say, that never 
 before has flight been expressed in paint so convincingly, so clearly. 
 The picture fills one with a sense of the force which propels the 
 weighty engine through space ; with a sense 'of immense height ; 
 with the exhilaration of speed and of the laws 'of nature^set at 
 defiance. It is the one instance among alhNevinson's war pictures 
 which shows the triumph and the mastery of the human mind over 
 the elements, instead of depicting him as the slave of his own 
 destructive inventions. " Before the [Dawn " is an inspired and 
 inspiring conception. It carries no hint of that deliberate calcula- 
 tion upon which works tinged with cubist tendencies are so often 
 founded. 
 
 I have already referred to the absence of anything approaching 
 sentimentality in Nevinson's war pictures. He records human 
 suffering with cruel concentration on its visible effects, in a spirit 
 of bitter resentment rather than of pity. Familiarity with hideous 
 sights and with the groaning agony of the wounded cannot fail to 
 blunt the sensibility of those who are brought into daily contact 
 with the human wreckage of war. His routine work as orderly at 
 military hospitals at home and abroad, if not exactly robbing him 
 of all sympathy with physical pain and mental anguish, had at any 
 rate trained him to look upon it in something of the spirit with which 
 the military surgeon in his picture, " The Doctor," attends to his 
 business of cutting and probing, intent upon his work and oblivious 
 of the groans and screams of his patient whose agony would only be 
 prolonged, and whose very life would be endangered, if the surgeon 
 were to lose his steadiness of hand or to follow the perfectly natural 
 impulse of interrupting the operation. Nothing could be more 
 concentrated than the doctor's fixed gaze at the wound to which 
 he is attending. And something of the same objective concentra- 
 tion is to be found in Nevinson's treatment of the gruesome scene, 
 which recalls, notwithstanding the broad modern technique and 
 subject, certain pictures by the Paduan primitive, Squarcione. 
 
 Nevinson accepts facts as they are, and depicts them in all their 
 heart-rending crudeness and ugliness. A typical instance is the 
 group of homeless refugees sitting, hopeless and dejected, at a 
 street corner among the pile of their poor belongings : " Belgium, 
 1914." It is a picture of utter misery and helplessness, without 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
even the comforting touch of the bond of sympathy and mutual 
 helpfulness which might unite these wretched outcasts. Shared 
 suffering is divided suffering. But these haggard refugees bear 
 their lot each alone and in silence. Their attitudes express dejec- 
 tion, their faces fierce resentment without resignation. They are 
 oblivious of each other under the burden of their own tragic fate. 
 They are brought into pictorial unity by coherent design, but 
 spiritually they remain detached individuals. This " illustration," 
 like the harrowing hospital scene, is, as it were, a vivid, concise 
 description in trenchant terms, without any comment. The spec- 
 tator is left to draw his own emotional conclusions. 
 
 And so it is with the terribly realistic study of a man suffering 
 from shell shock, " In the Observation Ward." It is like a page 
 from a medical book describing the symptoms of an illness. The 
 disturbed features ; the frightened, half-imbecile look ; the saliva 
 dribbling from the opened lips — everything spells : shell shock. 
 This portrait, painted with unswerving insistence on the structural 
 planes of the head, reveals more of the professional hospital worker's 
 intellectual curiosity, than of pity or sympathy. 
 
 Nevinson's cruel objectivity is less pronounced in the powerfully 
 impressive and thrilling hospital scene to which he has given the 
 significant title " La Patrie." The scene is a first-aid hospital 
 extemporized in a railway shed in close proximity to the fighting 
 line. The scanty light that enters through two small, low windows 
 and through the half- open door just suffices to reveal in sharp 
 flashes the littered straw on which rest, in long parallel rows, the 
 stretchers with their ghastly loads of agonized humanity. Some of 
 the wounded are wrapped in their greatcoats, others partially un- 
 dressed, ^\'ith bandages on head, back, arm or foot, each trying to 
 find the position which is most Hkely to give him relief, and each 
 bearing the marks of intense pain in his features. In the back- 
 ground, where the light streams through the door, stretcher-bearers 
 are seen, carrying or depositing their load of lacerated, writhing 
 flesh. Perhaps it is not so much the picture itself as the idea 
 suggested by its title, that produces an emotional effect altogether 
 different from that of the other scenes of suffering here described. 
 Through this literary association the tragic fact is raised from its 
 realistic bareness to a loftier region. The war machine and its 
 working are banished to the second plane, and a noble idea — 
 sacrifice of life and limb and all for home and country — tones down 
 the crudeness of the theme. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
In just one other picture Nevinson departs from that attitude 
 of hostihty to sentimentahty which makes him discard even 
 legitimate sentiment. " Twihght " stands alone among the young 
 artist's war pictures as an illustration of genuine humane feeling. 
 Through the chill twilight greyness, a " Tommy " is seen staggering 
 along, with grim determination of purpose, his body bent double 
 under the dead weight of his wounded and apparently unconscious 
 comrade whom he is carrying back from the trenches to the first- 
 aid station. The group is blocked out with a sculptor's sense of 
 massive form, the weight of the limp body splendidly expressed, 
 the atmosphere clearly indicated in pictorial values and not trans- 
 lated into plastic terms as in so many of Nevinson's landscapes. 
 
 This substitution of plastic for atmospheric values is, perhaps, 
 the feature of Nevinson's work that will be found most puzzling and 
 difficult of explanation by those who are not familiar with the 
 experiments of the Cubist school. Not that a sky like the one that 
 stretches over the swampy desolation of " A Flooded Trench on the 
 Yser " can be described as being " constructed " according to Cubist 
 principles. Cubism, properly speaking, is far more abstract and un- 
 related to the real appearance of nature. But, like Nevinson's 
 lucid and perfectly intelligible convention, it springs from a 
 passionate desire to realize the volume of things. The plastic sense 
 may be so strongly developed as to lead to a search for planes even 
 in transparent atmosphere. Nevinson's sky is, as it were, conceived 
 as sculpture, chiselled out in his imagination in broad planes, and 
 then translated back into paint. The convention adopted for 
 suggesting the heavy downpour of rain is that of the Japanese 
 colour print designers. 
 
 Architecture as well as sculpture must have been in Nevinson's 
 mind when he designed the sky of one of his searchlight pictures. 
 Instead of the rectilinear shapes of the pearly grey sky in the Trench 
 picture, we find here concentric curves and dome-like . shapes, 
 abstractions of form that, in their general effect, suggest the vaulting 
 of a mighty cathedral. Without losing in expressiveness, Nevinson 
 has here attained to a beauty of colour and rhythmic line com- 
 parable to that of the Italian Balla, a master in the art of geometric 
 abstraction. Balla must also have been in the English artist's mind 
 when he painted the "Bursting Shells," to which reference has 
 already been made. There are two versions of the same subject — 
 the one a pure abstraction of explosive force, the other, which marks 
 a nearer approach to the beauty of Balla's recent work, a compromise 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
between abstraction and representation, or illustration, the geo- 
 metric formula of the liberated destructive force being set against 
 a background of clearly recognizable buildings and paving- stones. 
 
 Among Nevinson's war pictures are others that deal with similar 
 motives from an altogether different point of view. " A Star Shell " 
 is almost pure impressionism — the radiance of luminous explosion 
 high up in the night sky reflected in the glitter of the surfaces 
 below that are turned towards the source of light. " A Strafing " 
 gives the visual impression of concentrated artillery fire as seen from 
 the trenches. In " Explosion," Nevinson has searched to give 
 expression to the terrific force of a mine disembowelling the earth 
 and throwing a mighty mass of solid matter sky-high with the dense 
 volume of smoke that rises from the ground like an inverted 
 pyramid. To the volcanic force of this sudden eruption are opposed 
 the reposeful lines that lead in a gentle slope towards the mine 
 crater. The form of the design may be likened to a sheaf of corn 
 tied close to the spreading base. This opposition of repose and 
 energy conveys an extraordinarily vivid sense of the explosive force 
 that in a brief moment of action changes the solid surface of the 
 earth. 
 
 But interesting though they be, it is not to pictures of this type 
 that Nevinson owes his recognition. The paintings that afford him 
 the best opportunity for following the curious bent of his talent are 
 those in which he deals with the concerted, rhythmic movement of 
 masses, and especially with soldiers on the march. All that 
 Futurism covld teach him with regard to dynamism in pictorial art, 
 kept within bounds of perfect intelligibility, is embodied in the 
 remarkably ingenious picture "Returning to the Trenches." It 
 depicts a detachment of poilus, heavily laden with their rifles and 
 complete campaigning accoutrements, marching along with swinging 
 step towards the firing-line. The grimness of the business is un- 
 mistakable. This is obviously neither parade, nor mancEuvre, but 
 the real thing. The men vary in stature, in age, in strength, but 
 they are all animated by the same impulse, the same discipline, the 
 same devotion to duty. There is in this unity of purpose an intan- 
 gible, spiritual rhythm, which is enforced by the rhythm of the 
 swinging gait and the sweeping forward movement. 
 
 If the picture is closely analysed, it will be found that, from the 
 highly placed " sky-line " down to the bottom of the canvas, it 
 changes by!^almost imperceptible degrees from realism to something 
 approaching undiluted cubism. The jagged silhouette formed by 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
the bayonets, kepis and packs, rising and falling against the streaky 
 sky in accordance with the varying height of the soldiers' figures, 
 is, apart from the necessary simplification, as true and clear as a 
 photographic snapshot. The feet and legs and the ground are 
 indicated by a system of repeated angles, curves and straight lines 
 that serve admirably to express the swinging rhythm of the march, 
 but only hint at the reality of the obliterated forms. This apparent 
 inconsistency admits of a perfectly logical explanation. In walking, 
 a person's head and shoulders move at about half the rate of his 
 legs, the movement of the torso being an almost even sliding through 
 space, whereas the movement of each leg is broken by an interval 
 of rest, when one foot touches the ground whilst the other swings 
 forward. To make up for this interval of rest, in which the torso 
 does not participate, the movement of the leg must be accelerated. 
 The eye of the observer has thus more time to take in the shape of 
 the slowly moving torso and head, than that of the foot, which, 
 being the only part of the body completely at rest during the 
 intervals of contact with the ground, has to make up for lost time. 
 And this is exactly what Nevinson tries to arrive at in " Returning 
 to the Trenches." The lower down your eye travels on the picture, 
 the more you will find the solid forms of the body changed into 
 planes and curves indicative of the direction and speed of the 
 movement. The only forms that are stated with any degree of 
 clearness are those of the hindmost feet, which are static at the 
 moment of pushing off from the ground. 
 
 " Column on the March " is a similar subject, treated in less 
 abstract fashion. Still, the forward pressure of the rhythmic tramp 
 on the roughly paved French road is convincingly suggested by the 
 zig-zag lines by which the solid mass of men stretching in vanishing 
 perspective from end to end of the picture surface is articulated, 
 and by the parallelism of the squared planes struck by the light. 
 Very similar in treatment is the procession of army transport wagons 
 " On the Road to Ypres." The same unity of purpose, the same 
 jagged, angular rhythm which is happily carried into the very sky 
 which has the air of being pierced and cut into rectilinear patterns 
 by flashing searchlights. In " A Dawn, 1914," Nevinson insists 
 more emphatically upon the zig-zag pattern, and reverts almost to 
 the uncompromising Futurism of his "Declaration of War" and 
 " Back in London." It shows a regiment of French infantry march- 
 ing through a winding street which is viewed in boldly receding 
 perspective. The whole width of the street is filled by the moving 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
mass of whom only the heads and shoulders and glittering bayonets 
 are visible. 
 
 Invariably, Nevinson reveals great tact in adapting the means 
 to the end. He is not the slave of his own convention. The formula 
 that serves him for the expression of the dynamic state does not 
 satisfy him when he aims at the interpretation of the static. Every 
 picture is to him an experiment. And when a difficulty has been 
 overcome to his satisfaction, his inquisitive mind turns to new 
 problems. This accounts for his different manners of treating 
 subjects that in their essential features are practically identical, 
 like " Troops Resting " and " Sprucers." Each represents a group 
 of soldiers in a restful state of immobility, but the quality of rest 
 is utterly different in each of these paintings. In the first, which 
 shows the men in their trench outfit reposing by the roadside, the 
 effect is one of latent energy and activity temporarily suspended ; 
 and this in spite of the obvious fatigue which in some figures almost 
 amounts to exhaustion. In the other, depicting some Army 
 Service men resting among the heavy packages in their charge, the 
 immobility is that of indolence and boredom. This effect is pro- 
 duced, not so much by attitude and facial expression, as by the 
 selection of planes and angles. 
 
 Nevinson has told the world what he had to say about the war. 
 He has done this with an emphasis and impressiveness which has 
 gained him not only the tolerance, but the enthusiastic approval, 
 even of those who were prone to scoff at all art that tries to break 
 away from academic convention. If he has not exhausted the 
 possibilities of his grand theme, he has extracted from it all that 
 appealed to his temperament. He has done with the interpretation 
 of war and may be confidently expected soon to start in search of 
 new artistic adventure. 
 
 [ 30 ] 
 
LIST OF PLATES 
 
 Column on the March Frontispiece 
 
 A TaUBE - - PAGE 33 
 
 The Mitrailleuse ^3 
 
 Motor Ambulance Driver ^'^ 
 
 Searchlights - 39 
 
 Pursuing a Taube 41 
 
 Before the Storm 43 
 
 The Doctor - 45 
 
 Belgium, 1914 47 
 
 In the Observation Ward 49 
 
 La Patrie 51 
 
 Twilight 53 
 
 Flooded Trench on the Yser 55 
 
 A Star Shell 57 
 
 Returning to the Trenches ----- 59 
 
 On the Road to Ypres ^1 
 
 A Dawn : 1914 63 
 
 Troops Resting ^5 
 
 Sprucers 6'^ 
 
 Motor Lorries ^^ 
 
 Patrols '^1 
 
 Bravo! ''^^ 
 
 La Guerre des Trous '^^ 
 
 Borsinghe Farm '^'^ 
 
 Southampton '^^ 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
A TAUBE 
 
 [ 33 ] 
 
THE MITRAILLEUSE 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
MOTOR AMBULANCE DRIVER 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
SEARCHLIGHTS 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
PURSUING A TAUBE 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
BEFORE THE STORM 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
THE DOCTOR 
 
 [ 45 ] 
 
BELGIUM, 1914 
 
 [ 47 ] 
 
i^r »,. 
 
 IN THE OBSERVATION WARD 
 
 [ 49 ] 
 
LA PATRIE 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
FLOODED TRENCH ON THE YSER 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
A STAR SHELL 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
RETURNING TO THE TRENCHES 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
ON THE ROAD TO YPRES 
 
 [ 6i ] 
 
A DAWN: 1914 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
TROOPS RESTING 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
SPRUCERS 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
MOTOR LORRIES 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
PATROLS 
 
 [ 71 ] 
 
BRAVO 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
LA GUERRE DES TROUS 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
BORSINGHE FARM 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
^ 
 
SOUTHAMPTON 
 
 [ 79 ]