Paris Fortifications

Location

Country: Luxembourg
City: Luxembourg
Place: British Embassy

An engaging composition, this painting by Christopher Nevinson presents an unusual view of Paris. A couple walk along part of the city’s fortifications, a bank of land which appears to emerge from the centre of the composition. It is as if we too are standing next to the artist looking at the scene. Beyond the grassy banks of earth are the smoking chimneys and distinctive tiled roofs and façades of the city’s buildings. 

In 1913, when this painting was made, Nevinson was living in Paris and studying at the Academie Julian and the Cercle Russe, where Henri Matisse was teaching. During these years, just before the outbreak of the First World War, he befriended a number of radical artists, including Amadeo Modigliani (with whom he shared a studio) and several of the Italian Futurists, who would have a profound influence on the work he made over the coming years as an official war artist. 

Originally designed in the early 19th century, the inner circle of the Paris fortifications was later supplemented with two more fortified rings. During the First World War, the fortifications protected the city from advancing German and Austrian forces. After the War, the innermost ring was demilitarised and passed to the municipal authorities. By the late 1930s, most of the surrounding buildings were demolished, and the fortifications eventually provided the foundations of the city’s ‘boulevard périphérique' (ring road) after the Second World War.

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, painter and printmaker, has been described as 'a vital and contentious figure, among the most important British artists of the twentieth century.' Nevinson studied art in London and then in Paris. In March 1914 he became a founding member of the London Group of artists, and in June of that year issued a Futurist manifesto, Vital English Art, with the Italian Futurist artist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. During the First World War, Nevinson served in Flanders and France as an ambulance driver and became a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps. In March 1915 his first war paintings were shown at the London Group. In June and July of that year he exhibited as a Futurist at the Vorticist exhibition (Vorticism was a British derivation of Cubism and Futurism) and contributed to the second and last issue of the Vorticist magazine Blast. Nevinson's first solo show, primarily of war paintings, was held in September 1916 at the Leicester Galleries in London, and was a great success. That year he was 'invalided' out of the Army and appointed an Official War Artist in 1917. He became the first artist to draw from the air. In 1919 he visited Paris and New York. He was created Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur in 1938, and Associate of the Royal Academy in 1939. Suffering deep depression and breakdowns as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, his health broke down due to overwork and he died in London in October 1946.

Places

France, Paris

Subjects

topography, WW1 art, townscape/cityscape, Vorticism, grass, tree, hill, man, woman, World War I, road, path, pavement, house, fortification, wall, chimney

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 - 1946)

Title

Paris Fortifications

Date

1913

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 45.00 cm, width: 60.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Mayor Gallery, March 1974

Inscription

br: C. R. Nevinson

GAC number

11024