Taube Pursued by Commander Samson by C.R.W. Nevinson, oil on canvas

In 1915, after volunteering as an ambulance driver in Dunkirk, Nevinson painted this imagined vision of Air Commodore Samson’s command. Samson’s Royal Naval Air Squadron had aggressively patrolled the French city against German reconnaissance.

From 1912 Nevinson developed a modernist style of geometric abstraction, combining the structural aspects of Cubism with the lively machine aesthetic of Italian Futurism. With the leader of the Futurist movement, Filippo Marinetti, he promoted an English Futurism, authoring an artistic manifesto, ‘Vital English Art’. In wartime, critics considered Futurism inappropriate for representing human tragedy. However, Nevinson’s aviation painting, emphasising mechanised warfare, received glowing reviews. A critic from The Sunday Times remarked of the picture, ‘If all Futurists gave such beauty of colour and conveyed movement with such imaginative power as Mr Nevinson shows us in these aeroplanes rushing through space, we should have no quarrel with them’. Purchased in 1981. Artist copyright: expired / RAF Museum.