Banking at 4000 Feet by Christopher Nevinson, 1889-1946

Christopher Nevinson, 1889-1946
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Banking at 4000 Feet

Original lithograph in black ink. 1917. Signed in pencil. Dated 1917. Numbered (65) from the edition of 100 signed impressions (plus c. 100 unsigned impressions). Commissioned from Nevinson as a War Artist. Issued by the Stationery Office in the series: 'Building Aircraft - The Great War Britain's Efforts and Ideals'.
Ref: Leicester Galleries - Nevinson in War and Peace no 23

Superb rich impression. On light pale cream wove paper. Absolutely excellent condition. Full margins. Sheet: 20 1/8 x 15 5/8ins. Image: 15 3/4 x 12 3/8ins (400x315mm).

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?Banking at 4000 Feet? is one of the single most famous images of First World War art in any graphic medium. The sense of involvement which it creates, the feeling that the viewer is sitting in the navigators seat of the two-seat biplane, and peering over the frail cockpit rail at the fields, and the hostile guns below, is totally compelling. Just for a moment we can see why the thrill of early flying blotted-out the terror of a destruction that might come at any moment.

Nevinson also used the construction of the image to inspired effect. Just before the War he had become a close friend of the Italian Futurist artist Severini. Nevinson was also associated with the British Vorticist painters, like Wadsworth, Wyndham-Lewis and Bomberg. To the Vorticists advocation of angular cubist-linked emotional forms Nevinson brought the Italian Futurists enthusiasm for the imagery of the machine age - that it was the machine that was the new Apollo. Nevinson, like his avant-garde painter friends, entered the war believing that it would show the supreme domination of the machine. By 1916 this romantic illusion had been shattered by the terrible reality. In ?Banking at 4000 Feet? the admiration for the machine and the true awareness of War come together.

This work was drawn as part of a series of aircraft studies commissioned from Nevinson as an ?Official War Artist? under the title ?The Great War Britain?s Efforts and Ideals?.