Signed l.r.: C.R.W. Nevinson

Wash over pen and pink ink, 17.5 by 27 cm

Provenance: executed as a design for Cadbury’s, 1932, from whom presented to a former employee on their retirement

Exhibited: The Leicester Galleries, London

In 1932, as a response to the Gorell Commission on Art and Industry, Cadbury’s embarked on an ambitious project to commission designs for their latest chocolate boxes from leading artists of the period. The result was a range of chocolates which employed designs from ten leading artists: Laura Knight, Arthur Rackham, George Sheringham, Edmund Dulac, Dod Procter, Ernest Procter, Arthur Watts, Mark Gertler and Nevinson. The present work is Nevinson’s original design for what was to illustrate the company’s exotic collection later that year, the composition eventually being worked up into a finished painting of the same subject.