C.R.W.Nevinson (1889 - 1946)


C.R.W.Nevinson joined the Red Cross in 1914 and went straight to the war front. After a period of ambulance work, he developed what was called 'rheumatism' and returned to the United Kingdom where he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps (also known as Rob All My Comrades or Rats after Mouldy Cheese ) at the 3rd London General Hospital at Wandsworth. Once there, he contributed to The Gazette which was an ambitious and amusing magazine sent monthly to everybody there. The standard of prose and drawing was high - many of the staff and patients being artists and journalists.


Here is Nevinson marked on the group photograph published in October 1917 of The Chain Gang, a "squad of men working on the grounds".


Here are the images Nevinson contributed after he had left the Hospital to the three volumes of its magazine. The Gazette , June 1916 p.243, gives details of his stays at Wandsworth; :Mr. - formerly Private - C.R.W.Nevinson sends a memento of his sojourn here in the shape of a Futurist reminiscence of the audience at a concert in our Recreation Room (p.237 and beneath here). Mr.Nevinson has, as it were, seen these audiences from both points of view, both as a member of the staff and a patient, for he had the unusual experience first as working as an orderly here and then being himself an inmate of one of the wards." All pages of The Gazette measure 13 x 20 cms.
March 1917 p.162


TEMPERATURE 102' 4 image measures 9 X 10 cms
Oct 1915, p.20 untitled but at the foot of an article on 'Bungalow Town' an ad hoc collection of walkways and buildings put up on Wandsworth common and land attached to the main hospital; image 6.5 x 10.5


Nov 1915, p.30 Night Arrival of Walking Wounded , 8.5 x 10cms, attached to an article on The Captives Home-Coming, a group of exchanged prisoners of war arriving in Red Cross wagons and ambulances at Wandsworth from the Station .


Feb.1916. p.115 A Futurist's Impression , 10 x 16.7 cms. A view of The Receiving Hall . not attached to a particular article. Whole page illustration. In April 1916, an article describes The Receiving Hall, " On the table at the far end stands a great tank of steaming cocoa and an array of cups. Orderlies are bringing in piles of bundles of'blues'; others are ready with string and labels and vast volumes in which the newcomers' belongings may be listed before they are taken to the pack store."


April 1916, p.179, image measuring 9 x 10cms; The Driver of the Ambulance , attached to an article on An Intake of the Wounded. The Ambulances collected the wounded from the station at Wandsworth and drove slowly over to the Hospital. An article in this issue describes the arrival of the ambulances at night, " The orderlies' ranks stiffen : the chat ceases : cigarettes are thrown away. The first ambulance has passed through the gates and is gliding up the drive. .."


June 1916, p.237, 10.5 x 10.5 cms. At the Concert. A Comic Song .

He also sent them a drawing after an image originally created at Wandsworth.
The Sprucers.


The images are interesting in that they make subtle allowances for the magazines' readers - with fewer Futurist abstractions and more identifiable objects which his readers would have been familiar.


Malcolm Arbuthnot's photographic portait of Nevinson in stylish war garb appeared in The Gazette , a and also in national periodicals such as The Graphic and Vogue.

 

The Gazette March 1917 describes him as "late of this unit"


Other artists who contributed to The Gazette include;
J.H.Dowd, the Punch artist (who was an orderly) R.B.Ogle and H.M.Bateman.

READING...


exhib.catal
.C.R.W.Nevinson, Retrospective , Kettle's Yard, Cambridge 1988-9


Richard Cork Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, Gordon Fraser, London, 1976, Volume 2. "Synthesis and Decline".

 

THE ARTIST MAGAZINE, 1943 ARTISTS OF NOTE

Review of Paint and Prejudice News Review 1937

A SELECTION OF PRINTS

Any London Street, etching before 1924