Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889-1946) A

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889-1946)
A Flooded Trench on the Yser
Pen and ink on laid paper, 1914-15, signed in ink lower right, sheet 154 x 190mm (6 x 7 ½ in)

Provenance:
Private collection UK.

The present work is a preparatory study for the oil painting Flooded Trench on the Yser of 1915 and for the later etching of 1916. This method of working a promising study up from a preparatory ink drawing to a final oil was usual for Nevinson. The work depicts the aftermath of the Belgian Government's decision to open the dikes to the North Sea in late October 1914, the torrent of water flooded a twenty mile stretch of land north of Ypres from Nieuport to Dixmude. The action was taken to try to slow the rapid progression of the German advance toward Ypres and Dunkirk and it was moderately successful. Nevinson was in the area in November 1914 whilst working with the Friends' Ambulance Unit, and it's likely that he saw the scene depicted early in November, as by January 1915 he had returned to the UK due to his chronic rheumatism.

There are a number of slight differences between the present work and the two later versions, the first and most obvious is the absence of the Hokusai-esque rain that cuts through the composition of both later works. Nevinson was a great admirer of Hokusai and it's likely that this element was not included in this present work as Nevinson wanted to look at examples of woodcuts featuring similar rain effects back in London, most likely Hokusai's Sudden Shower over Shin-ÅŒhashi bridge and Atake. Another area of interest are the four small shell explosions in the horizon line which are missing from both the oil and the later etching, they are in the later works changed to barbed wire fence posts.

We are very grateful to Dr. Jonathan Black, author of C.R.W. Nevinson The Complete Prints, for his assistance in the cataloguing of this work.