Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (b. 1889 London, England –d. 1946 London, England), Planes on the Way to the Front, 1917, Lithograph, The Dorothy Braude Edinburg (Class of 1942) Collection 1986.61

In this lithograph, Nevinson avoids any pageantry that might glamorize war. The circular insignia on the aircrafts’ wings mark them as French planes from World War I, in which the artist served first as an ambulance driver, and beginning in 1916, as an official War Artist. This image places the viewer in the cockpit, with a bird’s eye view of rushing fields that stretch to the horizon. Two other planes hover above the fields, which are fringed with tall trees and cleaved with roads, where small figures walk.  The shadow of the central aircraft ominously reflects its shape, and long shadows stretch behind the trees and people. The shadows interrupt the apparent calmness of the scene below, signifying the death and destruction that people were suffering at the war’s front and  illustrating  the violence and chaos that loomed over people’s lives during the First World War.

-Fatima Aslam ‘22