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Lot Essay
Dating from 1925, the present work depicts Parisian café society and was painted during Nevinson's most productive period. It was painted a year after Sunday evening, punts of the Thames at Henley (sold in these rooms, 30 November 2000, lot 35, for a world record price, £201,750, private collection) and both paintings display elements of Nevinson's return to pre-war post-impressionism.
Although after the war, Nevinson had declared that he had given up futurism, Sur la Terrasse, Montparnasse is indebted to Nevinson's involvement with the Futurist movement, displayed in the striking diagonals shooting beyond the electric lights depicted. 'Electric lights recur frequently in Nevinson's work, as they did in the work of many of the Futurists; Nevinson recalls in Paint and Prejudice the first time he saw a light bulb when staying at an hotel in Paris with his mother before the War. Visually, he was clearly as much interested in what they hid as what they revealed, thereby equating them with a complex set of values' (R. Ingleby (et. al.), loc. cit).
The present work is readable across the picture plane, however, there is a fragmentation of the subject matter that is typical of Nevinson's compositions. The clustering confusion of heads that are crammed into the confines of the canvas convey to the viewer the cacophony of noise that must have risen from these outdoor cafés. The sharp diagonals descending from the lights are echoed in the roofs of the buildings and brought forward into the lower half of the painting, holding the crowd of people in a snapshot of stillness within their mass of sociableness.
Although after the war, Nevinson had declared that he had given up futurism, Sur la Terrasse, Montparnasse is indebted to Nevinson's involvement with the Futurist movement, displayed in the striking diagonals shooting beyond the electric lights depicted. 'Electric lights recur frequently in Nevinson's work, as they did in the work of many of the Futurists; Nevinson recalls in Paint and Prejudice the first time he saw a light bulb when staying at an hotel in Paris with his mother before the War. Visually, he was clearly as much interested in what they hid as what they revealed, thereby equating them with a complex set of values' (R. Ingleby (et. al.), loc. cit).
The present work is readable across the picture plane, however, there is a fragmentation of the subject matter that is typical of Nevinson's compositions. The clustering confusion of heads that are crammed into the confines of the canvas convey to the viewer the cacophony of noise that must have risen from these outdoor cafés. The sharp diagonals descending from the lights are echoed in the roofs of the buildings and brought forward into the lower half of the painting, holding the crowd of people in a snapshot of stillness within their mass of sociableness.