Phil Jarman looks at how the First World War dramatically changed a talented landscape painter and his work.
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Destined for a career in the Royal Navy, a young Paul Nash could not have predicted how his life would take a dramatic turn at the outbreak of the First World War. As a teenager, Nash looked set to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps for a life at sea, but not gaining the necessary knowledge and skills to pass the entrance examinations he opted for a career as an artist.
For the four years preceding the Great War, Nash nurtured his talent as a painter and artist at the Slade School of Art. Unfortunately, he parted company with fellow students who became some of the most influential artists of the century such as Stanley Spencer, Edward Wadsworth, C.R.W. Nevinson and Ben Nicholson, after only a year.
Some aspects of the tasks set by his art tutors at the Slade challenged Nash; he found figurative drawing difficult and elected to pursue his own directions and opted to paint landscapes and sites of historical significance. Rural Buckinghamshire provided his early inspirations, with panoramic views of rolling hills, woodlands, sites of burial mounds and ancient hill forts, with Nash reproducing…
