A French Port (Bordeaux)

We are aware of only two other impressions of this subject to have appeared at auction in the last 30 years.


Having worked almost exclusively in intaglio and in drypoint, Nevinson was encouraged in the early 1920s to try his hand at etching by Walter Sickert. In his autobiography Paint and Prejudice,Nevinson wittily recalls his first forays in the medium:

Sickert had already advised me to try etching and had assured me it was the easiest medium in the world. On my protesting that this could not be so...he explained that all one did was to get a prepared plate on which your drawing had been photographed, or if you preferred to be a purist, you merely wetted your pencil drawing, had it pressed and therefore reverse on the wax and then kept the plate in your pocket and did a bit of drawing with a needle while you waited for a girl. If you wanted your lines to be darker you cut into the copper, as the old masters did, and dipped the plate in nitric acid as soon as you felt you had done enough...it was a thoroughly inaccurate description of etching, but a very helpful one in those days when the art was so clouded by the mumbo-jumbo of the experts and the writings of connoisseurs.' (Nevinson, 1938, quoted in: C.R.W. Nevinson, The Complete Prints, 2014, London, p. 95)

A French Port (Bordeaux) is one of artist's earliest etchings. It is based on an oil called Le Port which waspainted circa 1909 and owed much to Camille Pissarro's paintings of Rouen in the 1890s, which Nevinson greatly admired.