Paul Nash: Modern Artist, Ancient Landscape

DESCRIPTIONPaul Nash was born in London in 1889, the son of a successful lawyer. Influenced by the work of William Blake and contemporary Stanley Spencer, Nash held shows in 1912 and 1913 before joining the Artists' Rifles upon the outbreak of World War I. It was as a result of his harrowing experience in the trenches that his work developed from early imaginary landscapes to the harsh world of tragedy and triumph that he experienced on the Western Front. The essays in the book examine the dominant themes evident throughout Nash's career--decay, death and renewal, and cycles of nature--and place them in the context of "British" national sensibility during the interwar years. They also discuss the tension between the artist's increasing fascination with heritage, prehistoric cultures and primitive forms, and the invocation of the modern through industrialization, technology, and the machine aesthetic. This book reveals Nash as a painter who looked both back to the humanist English landscape tradition and forward to the technological age.