Southampton
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson British
Not on view
Nevinson made Southampton after illnesses led to him being released from the military with an honorable discharge. While the majority of Nevinson’s war-related works depict scenes set in northern France and Belgium, Southampton illustrates the massive scale of war mobilization. Dock workers are shown as part of a system comprising cranes, ships, materials, and machinery to support both troops overseas and domestic production. The men load large planks of wood, which would be used for trenches and dugouts at the front as well as in British industries such as coal. Their poses mirror each other and reflect the diagonals found throughout the composition, for instance in the stacks of wood and the cranes overhead and in the line of boats receding into the distance.
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