Paul Nash

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Paul Nash (self-portrait 1923)

Paul Nash (born May 11, 1889 in London , † July 11, 1946 in Boscombe , Dorset ) was a painter of English modernism.

Pre-war period

Paul Nash was the son of a successful lawyer . Nash first studied at the London County Council School of Photo-engraving and Lithography until his work caught the attention of the poet Gordon Bottomley and the artist William Rotherstein , who encouraged him to attend the Slade School of Art , where he met Stanley Spencer , Mark Gertler , William Roberts and Christopher RW Nevinson met. Nash enrolled at Slade School in October 1910, but only studied for a year. With exhibitions in 1912 and 1913, he began to make a name for himself as a painter. His paintings were influenced by the poet William Blake and the painters Samuel Palmer and Dante Gabriel Rossetti . The English landscape, above all through references to history such as the ancient sites of Avebury and Stonehenge and the fortress hill of Wittenham Clumps , which he painted several times , inspired him.

First World War

Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood, 1917 (1918), Collection of the Imperial War Museum , London

After the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and in 1916 got the rank of lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment . Whenever possible, he sketched life in the trenches on the Western Front, where he was deployed. In 1917 he was sent back to London after a civil accident. During his convalescence he made a number of drawings about the war which were exhibited and well received by the public. The pictures show influences of Vorticism and his magazine Blast . Christopher RW Nevinson was so impressed by the pictures that he recommended Nash to the War Propaganda Bureau , who then sent him back to the Western Front as a war painter in November 1917, where he made his first oil paintings. During the war, pictures such as: The Menin Road , We Are Making a New World , The Ypres Salient at Night , The Mule Track , A Howitzer Firing , Ruined Country and Spring in the Trenches were created . Nash was not happy with this work and wrote:

"I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls. "

“I'm no longer an artist. I am a messenger who brings words from those who fight to those who want the war to go on forever. My message will be weak and indistinct, but it will contain a bitter truth and may burn their lousy souls. "

Interwar period

Defense of Albion (1942)

Nash was a pioneer of modernism in Great Britain and joined the New English Art Club with Stanley Spencer , Duncan Grant and Mark Gertler . In 1933 he founded Unit One with Henry Moore , Barbara Hepworth and the critic Herbert Read , a modern art movement that was short-lived but influential on the British art scene in the interwar period. In 1936 he was involved in the organization of the International Surrealist Exhibition in the New Burlington Galleries in London with works.

Second World War

Messerschmidt in Windsor Great Park (1940)

During the Second World War, Nash worked again as an official war painter for the Ministry of Information and the Air Ministry . During this time the works Battle of Britain and Dead Sea were created .

Works

  • A Howitzer Firing , 1914–1918, Imperial War Museum
  • The Ypres Salient at Night , 1917-1918, Imperial War Museum
  • Ruined Country , 1917/18, private collection
  • Spring in the Trenches , 1918, Imperial War Museum
  • The Mule Track , 1918, Imperial War Museum
  • We Are Making a New World , 1918, Imperial War Museum
  • The Menin Road , 1918-1919, Imperial War Museum
  • Dead Sea , 1940/1941, Tate Gallery

literature

  • Causey, Andrew (1980). Paul Nash, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-1-85437-436-3 .
  • Gough, Paul J. (2010) 'A Terrible Beauty': British Artists in the First World War, Bristol, Sansom and Company. ISBN 1906593000 .
  • Haycock, David Boyd (2002). Paul Nash. London, Tate Publishing. ISBN 1-85437-436-2 .
  • The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 2, page 227

Web links

Commons : Paul Nash  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Nash, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1946
Place of death Boscombe , Dorset