Battlefields of Britain

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for International Trade, Old Admiralty Building

Observed from the window of an air pilot’s cockpit, Battlefields of Britain reveals an ethereal skyscape of clouds and glimpses of green countryside far below. Painted in 1942, this work was directly inspired by a line from High Flight, a sonnet by John Gillepsie Magee:
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Magee was a 19-year-old American pilot officer who died while on active service in Britain on 11 December 1941. After reading the posthumous publication of his sonnet in The Daily Mail in February 1942, Nevinson reflected on it as ‘… one of the best of the war, and I’ve tried to put his thoughts into my picture’. Nevinson had a keen interest in flying, and sketched during ten flights in preparation for painting Battlefields in Britain. In October 1942 he presented the painting to Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister, who, decided that it should be a gift to the nation, after which the work entered the Government Art Collection. Battlefields in Britain was first displayed in the Air Council room at the Air Ministry. Since then it has also featured in 10 Downing Street and the Residence of the British Ambassador to the United Nations in New York.

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

England

Subjects

topography, WW2 art, Vorticism, cloud, sky, World War II

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 - 1946)

Title

Battlefields of Britain

Date

1942

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 122.00 cm, width: 184.00 cm

Acquisition

Presented by the artist, October 1942

Inscription

br: C R W NEVINSON

Provenance

Presented by the artist to Winston Churchill as a gift for the Nation in October 1942

GAC number

0/5