
Ingram Reid
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Sold for £31,800 inc. premium
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Provenance
Elizabeth Russell Workman, thence by descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
Exhibited
London, Leicester Galleries, An Exhibition of New Works by C.R.W. Nevinson, October-November 1919, cat.no.2
Manchester, City Art Gallery, C. R. W. Nevinson Exhibition, July-August 1920, cat.no.22
Elizabeth Russell Workman (1874-1962) and husband Robert Alfred Workman (1872-1948) were collectors of Post-Impressionist and Scottish art (including work of the Scottish Colourists), and supporters of the avant-garde. Elizabeth appears to have been the more discerning and adventurous collector. As Wyndham Lewis recalled in his autobiography Blasting and Bombardiering: 'Mrs. Workman (of whom I did an excellent portrait) was one of the only people in England to understand French painting, of which she had some remarkably fine specimens'.
No less than three Nevinson paintings were acquired by members of the Workman family from the war artist's solo Peace exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1919. A Canadian Dawn was Elizabeth's choice, and of the three pictures the one that stayed in the family the longest. All three pictures, that is Elizabeth's, husband Robert's and brother-in-law William's, were borrowed by Manchester City Art Gallery for their Nevinson Exhibition of 1920.
Nevinson's stock as a painter, in those post-First World War days, was still high, and he still had the aura of a 'rebel', reminding us that Nevinson had been vitally involved, in pre-war days, in that product of the British avant-garde's prime mover Wyndham Lewis, the Rebel Art Centre in Great Ormond Street.
We are grateful to Christopher Martin for his assistance in compiling this catalogue entry.