DIMENSIONS:Â (unframed)14 x 10 in./ 35.7 x 25.5 cm
SIGNATURE:Â Signed lower right
MEDIUM: Watercolour, pencil and gouache on paper
Happier Days, Walton Bridge
P.O.A.
Out Of Stock
This watercolour exhibited at Nevinson’s memorial exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1947 as Happier Days, Walton Bridge shows every sign of being painted in the early 1930s. It would appear to be Sunday afternoon at Walton (also referred to as Walton-on-Thames), which was shown at The Leicester Galleries in 1932, at a time when Nevinson was living in nearby Shepperton. The third Walton Bridge is depicted, before it was bomb damaged in 1940. Many of Nevinson’s pictures of this period feature landscapes in Surrey, and along the Thames. The figures punting on the left-hand side of the picture echo such paintings of his from the early 1920s as Hampton Court and Summer Evening, Thames Ditton.
Provenance
With The Leicester Galleries, London, May 1947, where acquired by the family of the previous owner;
Private Collection, United Kingdom
Biography
Richard Nevinson was born in Hampstead, one of the two children, and the only son, of the war correspondent and journalist Henry Nevinson and the suffrage campaigner and writer Margaret Nevinson Educated at Uppingham School, Nevinson went on to study at the St John’s Wood School of Art. Inspired by seeing the work of Augustus John, he decided to attend the Slade School of Art. There his contemporaries there included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash.
Nevinson studied under the well reputed artist Henry Tonks. In Paris he studied at the Academie Julian, where he met Vladimir Lenin and Pablo Picasso. He shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani, became acquainted with Cubism and also met the Italian Futurists Marinetti and Gino Severini, by whom he was greatly inspired. In London, he also became friends with the radical writer and artist Wyndham Lewis.
The war had a major impact on the artist’s career. Nevinson was celebrated for having produced some of the most enduring trench paintings of The Great War. He was therefore appointed as an official war artist during WWII. Following that, he turned to depicting urban scenes of Modern life, leaving the horrors of the war behind.
Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, Watercolours from Nature, March 1932, cat.no.57;
as Sunday afternoon at Walton London, New English Art Club, Winter, 1932, cat.no.254;
as Sunday, Walton Bridge London, The Leicester Galleries, Memorial Exhibition of Pictures by C.R.W. Nevinson A.R.A., May-June 1947, cat.no.61
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