A Dawn, a 1914 picture of French soldiers marching grimly to the front in Flanders, has been consigned from a private source having been acquired in 1964.
It will be offered at Sotheby’s Modern & Post-War British Art sale on November 21 with an estimate of £700,000-1m.
The painting is one of the works that featured in Nevinson’s solo show at the Leicester Galleries in 1916 – the exhibition that made his name – and is one of only a handful from the event that still remain in private ownership.
“Powerful painting”
The artist had journeyed to the front within a few weeks of the outbreak of the First World War, beginning a stint as an ambulance driver and witnessing the horrors of life in the trenches. The soldiers depicted in A Dawn were French soldiers who, unlike their British counterparts at the beginning of the War, were conscripts rather than volunteers.
Nevinson portrays them marching rhythmically and stoically on an autumnal morning in his trademark Vorticist style.
Sotheby’s senior specialist in Modern & Post-War British Art Simon Hucker said: “Nevinson’s A Dawn ranks alongside the Tate’s La Mitrailleuse and the Imperial War Museum’s French Troops Resting as the very best of the artist’s war paintings, works that define our vision of the Great War.
"With the majority of Nevinson’s most important works in major museums, the term ‘museum-quality’ can be applied with total confidence to this profoundly powerful painting.”
The current auction report for Nevinson was set in June 2016 when Sotheby’s sold the 1916 pastel Troops Resting, a study for the finished painting that is now in the Imperial War Museum, for a premium-inclusive £473,000.
