Christopher Nevinson was born in London and studied at the St John’s Wood School of Art and the Slade School of Art. The assistant professor at the Slade, Henry Tonks, advised him to abandon all thoughts of being an artist and, in 1912, he left the school and went to Paris. There he befriended the Italian Futurist Marinetti. When Marinetti came to London in 1913 he was welcomed by Nevinson and Wyndham Lewis, the avant-garde artist with whom Nevinson had become friends. By 1914, however, Lewis had fallen out with both Marinetti and Nevinson as he had abandoned Futurism and founded the semi-Futurist art movement called “Vorticism”. Nevinson continued to affiliate himself with the Futurists until the following year. During the war, he served as a Red Cross orderly and with the Royal Army Medical Corps before being disharged in 1916, due to illness. He continued to paint during this time in a futurist manner inspired by his experiences in war but by the time he was appointed official war artist in 1918, he was painting in a more realist fashion and enjoyed critical and public approval when these works were shown at the Leicester Galleries. However, he soon moved from painting to journalism, regularly conributing to, amongst others, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail from 1920 until 1940. Although he continued to paint during this time, his artistic career was never particularly distinguished and by 1943, he had stopped painting due to a series of strokes.

Nevinson is remembered for his early paintings, such as his views of London and New York, which are particularly striking. He was made an associate of the Royal Academy in 1939.