Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson A.R.A.

(British, 1889-1946)

Magasins du Louvre 76 x 50.4 cm. (29 7/8 x 19 3/4 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With The Leicester Galleries, London, May 1947, where acquired by
R. Bruce, and thence by descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, The Leicester Galleries, Water-colours and Paintings by C.R.W. Nevinson, March 1926, no. 61 (as Le Louvre)
London, The Leicester Galleries, Memorial Exhibition of Pictures by C.R.W. Nevinson, A.R.A. (1889-1946), May-June 1947, no. 26

The urban environment occupied the central point of Nevinson's subject matter, with a significant majority of his work coming from Paris, New York and London. Connected by their status at the time as the three most culturally and financially dominant metropoles in the West, these cities were the natural destination for an artist captivated by the possibilities of urbanisation, as well as the tensions and social problems that are inexorably tied in with such opportunity. But beyond the shared magnetism they exerted on the artist, they held very different places in his imagination.

Of the three, his Paris work arguably offers the most authentic glimpse of a city in earnest and of its everyday inhabitants. He first moved to Paris in 1912 to study at the Académie Julian, after leaving the Slade School of Art. Spending two years there, Nevinson was enraptured by the intensity and diversity of artistic expression that had developed in the previous half-century, and was continuing to develop all around him. He shared a studio with Modigliani for a time, met with Picasso on several occasions, and befriended leading Italian Futurists Severini and Boccioni. Nevinson was thoroughly taken by continental art.

The present work is a fine measure of how Nevinson engaged with Paris as a city. Disregarding the Palais du Louvre behind him, he is drawn almost in unison with the viewer through the archway and out onto the street, where the real essence of Paris can be found. Infected by his surroundings, he sets his sights on a moment of everyday life, capturing the in-motion vibrancy and framing it with ingenuity and visual intrigue with an archway as if we are watching the goings on through a window. Magasins du Louvre reflects an inquisitive freedom to immerse himself in the mundane that Nevinson seems to have felt in Paris, a freedom perhaps from the more sweeping societal concerns that came to the fore in his New York work. It gives the distinct impression of an artist in genuine delight with where he is and what he is seeing – a testament to a visual and atmospheric love of Paris unspoilt by the anxieties and relentless drive of modernity.

Nevinson produced an etching of the same subject in 1922, entitled Le Louvre.

We are grateful to Christopher Martin for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.