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Dimensions: 18 by 15 cm.; 7 by 6 in.

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Provenance: Leicester Galleries, London, 1916, where purchased by Arnold Bennett;
Sotheby's, London, 26 April 1961, lot 39, where bought by Sir David Scott for £25

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Literature: Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, pp. 186-189.

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Notes: It is sometimes possible to pinpoint a particular work which marks a new phase in an artist's career, either stylistically or critically. For Nevinson, La Mitrailleuse was just such a painting. Although it had been shown earlier in 1916, its inclusion in the hugely successful Leicester Galleries exhibition Paintings and Drawings of War by C.R.W. Nevinson (late Private R.A.M.C.) in September 1916 saw it become the painting that for many of the critics encapsulated the artist's distinctive and powerful response to the war on the Western Front. The claustrophobic and intense atmosphere of a trench-mounted machine gun and the operating team is the most striking element of the painting, with the gunner hunched over his weapon, his loader at his side, and both men are entirely occupied with the area in their sights. A comrade shouts along the trench, perhaps for further supplies, perhaps to have the body of their fallen fellow removed. By making the soldiers clearly recognisable as French servicemen, Nevinson was able to neatly sidestep the official strictures on the depiction of a dead British soldier, and the horror of the preoccupation of the living whilst a dead body lingers amongst them was a feature that was key to the impact the painting had on contemporary observers. As the leading British exponent of the Italian Futurist movement in the years prior to the outbreak of war, Nevinson had by implication subscribed to a doctrine that expounded the concept of warfare as a demonstration of virility and masculinity, the cleansing power of which was to herald an age of the machine. However the realities of the grinding trench war of the Western Front, which Nevinson himself amply witnessed, and the steady flow of telegrams home giving news of deaths and severe injury were never really going to create a receptive audience to the maintenance of such a position. Nevinson very adroitly managed to emphasise his own war service and knowledge and create an image of himself as the modern artist responding to the cataclysmic events he had witnessed whose knowledge of current theories and styles allowed him a unique voice, combining experience and artistic verisimilitude. This combination of approaches worked, and Nevinson's Leicester Galleries exhibition positioned him as the leading British painter of the war in the minds of the public and press. Allegedly painted during his honeymoon in late 1915 along with Flooded Trench on the Yser (private collection), the power of the image whose protagonists become subservient to their machine was immediately recognised by critics. Charles Lewis-Hind, reviewing it at its earlier exhibition for the Daily Chronicle, wrote that 'He has seen, and has been deeply moved by the sight of this grim pit in the French lines covered with barbed wire through which the reluctant daylight peers; he has seen the crew of the mitrailleuse crouched in their pit (one dead), angular, implacable, machine-brains of destruction, the men like the gun, the gun like the men.' (Charles Lewis-Hind, Daily Chronicle,
9 March 1916). Sickert claimed that the painting was 'the most authoritative and concentrated utterance on the war' (W.R. Sickert, "O Matre Pulchra", The Burlington Magazine, April 1916) and this appreciation of Nevinson's work, and La Mitrailleuse in particular, was not limited to Britain, with figures such as Guillaume Apollinaire writing on his work. The painting was quickly acquired by The Contemporary Art Society and presented to the Tate Gallery in 1917. It was Nevinson's frequent practice to produce versions of his images in a variety of media, and at least one other drawn version of the present work is known. As with the prints that he produced of war subjects, his distinctive graphic style lent itself very well to monochromatic images, and here the dramatic contrasts created by the jagged black outlines, especially in the folds of the soldiers' uniforms, gives the drawing an impact far beyond its size. There are rarely many differences between the painted and drawn versions of each subject, suggesting that Nevinson did not envisage these works as studies for the paintings, but rather as explorations of the different possibilities for presentation of the subject offered by each technique. The present picture was bought at the Leicester Galleries in 1916 by the author Arnold Bennett who knew Nevinson well. Bennett wrote to his brother Septimus on 15 October 1916 about another painting by Nevinson which he purchased at the Leicester Galleries. "Also I haven't broken to her [his wife Marguerite] that I have bought a magnificent hospital picture by young Nevinson. Women don't understand the true economy of helping artists while investing your money in property that is bound to go up. Unfortunately while I am keeping a masterly silence the Leicester Gallery people told the Daily Mirror and as the whole army reads the Daily Mirror every officer who come into the house says? "I see you've been buying pictures etc..." Arnold Bennett, the son of a solicitor, was born in Hanley, Staffordshire, in 1867. Educated locally and at London University, he became a solicitor's clerk, but later transferred to journalism, and in 1893 became assistant editor of the journal Woman. Bennett published his first novel The Man from the North in 1898. This was followed by Anna and the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910), The Card, (1911) and Hilda Lessways (1911). Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Charles Masterman the head of the War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) invited twenty-five leading British authors to Wellington House, to discuss ways of best promoting Britain's interests during the war. Those who attended the meeting included Bennett, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, William Archer, G.K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbold, John Galsworth, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G.M. Trevelyan and H.G. Wells. Bennett soon became one of the most important figures in this secret organisation. His first contribution to the propaganda effort was Liberty: A Statement of the British Case. It first appeared as an article in the Saturday Evening Post. In December it was expanded and published as a pamphlet by the War Propaganda Bureau. To disguise the fact it was a government publication, the WPB used the Hodder and Stoughton imprint. In June, 1915, the War Propaganda Bureau arranged for Bennett to tour the Western Front. Bennett was deeply shocked by the conditions in the trenches and was physically ill for several weeks afterwards. His friend, Frank Swinnerton, later recalled, 'he visited the front as a duty, and was horrified at what he saw and felt that he must not express that horror.' Bennett agreed to provide an account of the war that would encourage men to join the British Army. The result was the pamphlet, Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front (1915). Shortly after this Bennett purchased this picture at the Leicester Galleries. This picture probably had a particular resonance with Sir David Scott as, like most men of his generation, he had experienced the horrors of war at close-hand. He had lost many comrades and friends during the First World War and later in life he told a friend that almost all of his school friends had died on the battlefields of Europe in those tragic early years of the twentieth century. His military career had begun as a reservist from the time when he first worked at the Foreign Office and at the outbreak of war he joined the British Expeditionary Force. He fought with distinction in France, Belgium and at Salonika. In 1915 he was wounded and returned home suffering from typhoid and jaundice. Sir David was mentioned in despatches, awarded the Légion d'Honneur and an O.B.E. for his military endeavours. Like the men depicted in La Mitrailleuse Sir David Scott understood the heroism and tragedy of war.