Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

The Arrival

c.1913

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In Tate Britain

Historic and Modern British Art: Modern Times: 1910–1920

Artist: Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson 1889–1946
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 762 × 635 mm
frame: 895 × 775 × 60 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the artist's widow 1956
Reference: T00110

Online caption

Christopher Nevinson was interested in the idea of ‘simultaneity’, the way in which humans can experience multiple elements of a moment all at once. Here, Nevinson paints various details of a ship arriving to land all at once. The overlapping, geometric style creates a sense of commotion that is not explicitly shown. When Nevinson first exhibited this work in 1915, he titled it My Arrival in Dunkirk. This refers to the French port city many British soldiers travelled to in order to fight against the Germans in the First World War.

Catalogue entry

T00110 THE ARRIVAL c. 1913

Inscr. ‘C. R. W. Nevinson’ b.r.
Canvas, 30×25 (76×63·5).
Presented by the artist's widow Mrs Kathleen Nevinson 1956.
Exh: (?) London Group, March 1914 (39); London Group, March 1915 (27); Advertising and Marketing Exhibition (Commercial Art Section), Olympia, July 1933 (139); Leicester Galleries, May–June 1947 (1); Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, Tate Gallery, July–August 1956 (180).
Repr: Tate Gallery Report 1956–7 , 1957, between pp.16 and 17; John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery, 1962, p.254.

This work, typical of Nevinson's Futurist period, aroused much comment when it was exhibited in 1915 as ‘My Arrival in Dunkirk’ (that it was this work is confirmed by the contemporary reproductions in the Daily Express, 25 February 1915, and the Daily Graphic, 5 March 1915). It was probably the work already exhibited as ‘The Arrival’ the year before, when a review in the Star said of it: ‘It resembles a Channel steamer after a violent collision with a pier. You detect funnels, smoke, gangplanks, distant hotels, numbers, posters all thrown into the melting-pot, so to speak. Mr Nevinson acted as interpreter, explaining that it represented a “state of simultaneous mind”.’

The composition was later used for the dust-jacket of the novel Crime de Luxe by Elizabeth Gill, published by Cassell's in June 1933, at a time when Nevinson was greatly interested in the employment of leading artists in commercial design.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II