Rough Sea

Nevinson produced a small number of seascapes in addition to Rough Sea during the first half of the First World War, including The Wave, A Cornish Sea, and Patrols, each produced around 1915-17. However, bouts of rheumatic fever and shell-shock caused by working as a Red Cross volunteer, as an ambulance man and motor mechanic in Flanders, shortened his time at the front. After a period invalided out of the fighting zone, Nevinson was able to include his new pictures from his war time experiences in a one-man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1916. These pictures received critical acclaim and a contemporary reviewer heralded Nevinson as the first British artist to give 'really profound and pictorial expression to the emotions aroused by war'. In turn, this acclaim led to his appointment by the Department of Information as one of only three 'young' Official War Artists, alongside Eric Kennington and Paul Nash in May 1917.

In July 1917, he left London for a tour of France. He was able to visit artillery batteries, flew over enemy territories and was fired at by German anti-aircraft guns, as well as sketching in 'no-man's-land', still experiencing the horrors of war in all its ferocity.

In 1918, Nevinson exhibited again at the Leciester Galleries where he asked in the foreword of the exhibition to be 'thoroughly disassociated from every "new" or "advanced" movement; every form of "ist", "ism", "post", "neo", "academic" or "un academic"', an attitude that he continued to hold true throughout his long career (see R. Ingleby (ed.), exhibition catalogue, C.R.W. Nevinson The Twentieth Century, London, Imperial War Museum, 1999, pp.27-37).