Study for ‘Returning to the Trenches’ 1914 - 1915

Nevinson served in the Royal Army Medical Corp during the first world war. This is a sketch for a painting exhibited in London in 1915. Nevinson argued that Futurist Art was the only way to express the ‘brutality of the emotions seen and felt on the present battlefields of Europe’. The Daily News said the painting showed that ‘victory will be the new theme’ of the war. It was shown again in London in September 1916, a few months after the first performance of Hubert Parry’s now famous setting of Blake’s Jerusalem. This originally spoke of a different kind of victory. Gallery label, December 2004