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6 Nevinson did not rest on his laurels after the successful reception given his drypoints. Early in 1917 he was encouraged to experiment in lithography by the master lithographers Joseph Pennell and Francis Ernest Jackson – co- founders in 1908 of the Senefelder Club dedicated to promoting wider awareness of the medium and its particular properties. In January 1917 he exhibited two lithographs at the Club: the impressive Dawn at Southwark and the more tightly focussed Loading the Ship – a section magnified from his earlier drypoint Southampton (1916) - creating a new composition even more concentrated and claustrophobic than the former. Dawn at Southwark was interpreted widely as further evidence that Nevinson was a printmaker of huge talent, working directly on the surface of the lithographic stone, scratching away the ink to reveal highlights in a manner reminiscent of the mezzotint technique in which he would be experimenting within the year. Campbell Dodgson, at the time Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, wrote that Dawn at Southwark was one of the finest lithographs to have been produced in England in recent years while another authority on printmaking matters, Oscar Drey, was of the opinion in The Westminster Gazette in January 1917 that Nevinson had an extremely bright future ahead of him as a lithographer and poster designer. It was most likely Dodgson who brought Nevinson's work to the attention of the recently established Department of Information in the spring of 1917 – they were looking for British printmakers to participate in a large programme of sixty-six propaganda lithographs by eighteen artists entitled Britain's Efforts and Ideals. Nevinson, keen to find a position as an official war artist that would exempt him from further military service (he had been invalided out of the RAMC on 7 January 1916 suffering from rheumatic fever which had weakened his heart) readily agreed to contribute six designs on the theme Building Aircraft. When Britain's Efforts and Ideals were exhibited in all at the Fine Art Society in July 1917, Nevinson's contribution was singled out by many critics and, by ordinary members of the public writing to newspapers, for their 'dynamism' and for conveying the truth of the growing importance of air power to the increasingly desperate struggle on the Western Front. The more perceptive observers, such as Konody and Dodgson, noted how skilfully Nevinson had drawn on the example of earlier printmakers, such as Munch and Goya, in his compositions such as Acetylene Welders (1917) and In the Air (1917). The former indicated the increasing importance of women workers within the expanding aircraft industry. Indeed, the President of the Society of Women Welders, Rachel 'Ray' Strachey, was so taken with the image that she asked the artist's permission later in 1917 to use it as the basis for a poster advertising the ground-breaking activities of her organisation. Nevinson readily agreed as he was always delighted by evidence that his work was understood and appreciated by the general public as well as by the cognoscenti. In later life he often mentioned how much faith he placed in the aesthetic opinion of his wife Kathleen whom he had married in November 1915 and who had succeeded in qualifying as a professional gardener as well as that of his redoubtable charwoman for over twenty years, a Mrs Gilby of Peckham Rye. As Britain's Efforts and Ideals opened in London, Nevinson left to work in France for a month as an official war artist. Towards the end of his trip, late in July 1917, he wrote excitedly to his superior at the Department of Information, C.F.G. Masterman, that he had explored most corners of the Front, seen artillery batteries in action, observation balloons in operation and accompanied fighting patrols into no-man's-land. On returning to London, early in August 1917, Nevinson thereafter produced a stream of powerful prints related to what he had seen in France such as Ramming Home a Heavy Shell (1918) – one of his rare excursions into woodcut – the drypoint Nerves of an Army (1918) celebrating the commitment of the British Tommy gamely if not particularly effectively in this case attempting to repair telephone wires severed by recent shelling and the atmospheric lithograph Hauling Down an Observation Balloon at Night (1918) in which the figures wrestling with the mass of the balloon flickering in the lamp light Loading the Ship, 1917 Page 19 Acetylene Welder, 1917 Page 20