Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, A.R.A.

Drypoint, 1918, a good impression of this rare subject, signed and dated in pencil, on laid paper

Jonathan Black, C.R.W. Nevinson The Complete Prints, Farnham, 2014, p.32, no.38, another example illustrated.

With margins, in good condition apart from a few thinned areas in the upper part of the sky (these appear to be flaws in the paper), a few pale fox marks, very pale mount-staining, framed.
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'Our Futurist technique is the only possible medium to express the crudeness, violence and brutality of the emotions seen and felt on the present battlefields of Europe.' (The Artist, Daily Express, 1915)

The title of That Cursed Wood echoes lines in Siegfried Sassoon's poem 'At Carnoy' (dated 3 July, 1916 and published in book form the following year): "...Tomorrow we must go/To take some cursed Wood..." Nevinson's title is ironic, as Sassoon does not envisage the devastated landscape, but the sheer effort and resolution called for by the battle-weary force in securing the wood. It is one of Nevinson's most memorably bleak images, portraying a blasted ground with no sign of human life, but of death signalled by war planes flying above. Sassoon was one of the soldier-poets who visited the Nevinson family home in Hampstead during the First World War.

Christopher Martin