Paul Nash (1889-1946)

Abstract 2, 1926

Edition of 25
Signed and dated lower right
Inscribed ’25’ upper margin
Sheet size 22.2 x 14.5 cm
Reference: Greenwood G.75, Colvin 25.29, Postan W.76

Text from Frances Carey & Antony Griffiths, ‘Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960’, BMP, 1990This print is closely related to another of the same year entitled ‘Design of Flowers’, of which it seems to be an abstract derivation.

In 1928 an exhibition of almost the entire oeuvre of Nash in wood-engraving was held at the Leicester Galleries, and coincided with the publication of a catalogue of them by John Gould Fletcher in ‘Print Collector’s Quarterly’. All the prints shown here were available for 2 guineas each. The exhibition was not a success, and marked a turning-point in Nash’s career: after this he made hardly any more wood-engravings.

In an article entitled ‘Woodcut patterns’ published in ‘The Woodcut, an Annual’ (edited by Herbert Furst) in 1927, Nash wrote of wood engraving:”… there is always the dangerous seduction of skilfulness to be taken into account. Hitherto this has been a temptation mainly for the craftsman. Today it is likely to prove the artist’s snare. Because, as an engraver, I fear such a danger invading the art I practise, I have become lately more interested in woodcut patterns than in woodcut pictures. It is always a relief to be rid of the responsibility of representation . . . Wood seems to yield to the evolution of an abstract design or a decorative arabesque as stone excites the sculptor to the creation of pure form. For it is the glyptic character of engraving on wood which is its peculiar charm”.

Bouquet, 1927

Edition of 50
Signed, titled, dated and numbered

LITERATURE:
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. W.79.
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G.76.

Design (for invitation card), 1922

Edition of 12
Signed and titled in lower right

LITERATURE
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash.
London, Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. 20.
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G55.

Garden Pond, 1922

Edition of 25
Signed, titled, dated and numbered

LITERATURE:
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash.
London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. W.23.
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G.24.

Recovering from a severe nervous breakdown in 1921, this is the fourth of seven wood-engravings Nash made for ‘Places’, a volume of his own poetry, published in two editions in December 1922. The Garden Pond’ is in the village of Wittersham, two miles north of Oxenbridge. Andrew Causey suggests in unsettling wartime conditions, it seemed to gain meaning as a local Lake Avernus, entrance to the underworld.

German Double Pill-Box, 1918

Signed & dated lower right. Dedicated in pencil to ‘Sir Michael Sadler’ upper left.
From the edition of 25
Reference: Postan L5

Created as part of Ministry of Information commission, Scheme 3.

This lithograph was executed when Paul Nash was an official war artist recording the war in Flanders. It shows the aftermath of the battle of Gheluvelt which took place from the 29th to the 31st of October 1914. Paul Nash had arrived as soldier in Flanders in March 1917, but having broken a shoulder in May of the same year was sent home to recuperate. During that period he exhibited war work which allowed him to go to the front as a war artist rather than an active soldier.

This picture belongs to a series of lithographs first shown at the Leicester Galleries, in London, the following year, in 1919. It shows a pillbox or guard post built by the Germans at Gheluvelt, so called because of the similarity in shape to the cylindrical boxes in which medical pills were sold. The battle of Gheluvelt, part of the first battle of Ypres, was known for its brutality. It was fought between the British and the Germans and ended with the latter being defeated; although it was the closest the Germans came to break the Allied lines. Here the sky is heavy, the masonry of the building broken, the tree decapitated and there are shell-burst holes in the ground, all evidence of a violent attack.
(Evelyne Bell)

Mine Crater (Hill 60), 1917

Edition 18 of 25
Signed and dated ‘December 1917LITERATURE: Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. L1.

Created when a railway cutting was built in the 1850s, Hill 60 was a favourite spot for courting couples before the war. The hill was a coveted point of high ground near the village of Zillebeke on the Ypres frontier. In the First Battle of Ypres in 1914 the high ground of Hill 60 was captured by German forces and a lengthy phase of static trench warfare ensued. The area became renowned as a place of intensive mining activity with both sides tunnelling under No Man’s Land.

Paul Nash was based nearby in the Spring of 1917 with the 15th Hampshires when he fell into a trench, breaking his ribs and was sent back to England to convalesce. Several days later the Battle of Messines (7th-14th July) began with one of the largest explosions in history up to that point, reportedly heard as far away as Dublin. The mines underneath Hill 60 were detonated at approx. 3:10 am destroying a large part of Hill 60 and killing as many as 10,000 German soldiers. The 15th Hampshires were sent into battle in the offensive that ensued and suffered many causalities. Nash lost many friends in the attack and his depiction is surely a tribute to his comrades. The shattered trees in the background stand as symbols for the bodies beneath the ground. The demolished earth that rises in front of the view in a confronting wall is the ground so fought over for four years. The subject is not only a tribute to his comrades but also to the bitter pointlessness of war.

The site is now a battlefield memorial site, left untouched by all but nature since the Great War. While the giant crater is still visible today, nature has begun to reclaim the land.

Rain, Lake Zillebeke, 1918

Edition of 25 proofs on cream wove paper with a few proofs on white wove
Ref: Postan L3

Snow Scene, 1920

Aside from the edition of 50
Signed and dated lower right
Inscribed ‘To William Rothenstein, Christmas 1920, from Paul NashLITERATURE:
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat no. W5.
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G5.

Strange Coast, Dymchurch, 1920

Edition of 30
Signed, titled and dated in pencil

LITERATURE:
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash.
London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat no. L10.

Paul Nash first visited the Kent village of Dymchurch in 1919. A delightful place with much inspiring material for work he subsequently moved his family there in 1921. The lofty broad seawall protects the low lying and ancient area of Romney Marsh from flooding. Running for six kilometres, nine metres high and six metres wide the monumental wall was originally constructed in Roman times with the great Martello towers added in the Napoleonic era after the threat of invasion. Three sluices gates in the wall allowed the water on the wetland to run out at low tide. Nash, who nearly drowned as a child, wrote of his fear and fascination with the sea; ‘cold and cruel waters, usually in a threatening mood, pounding and rattling along the shore’. This feeling of dread can be sensed in his works of Dymchurch with a strange low evening light casting long shadows.

The Bay, 1922

Edition of 50
Signed, titled and dated

LITERATURE:
Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash.
London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. W.27.
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G.20.

This print, along with Dyke by the Sea,’ were two of his largest and most significant wood-engravings. Having left the blocks in his room at the Royal College of Art while he was teaching there for a short period in 1924, the blocks were burned, apparently by a cleaner who thought they were kindling for the fire.

The Wall, Dymchurch, 1920

Edition of 50 (plus 10 proofs)
Numbered in pencil with the Paul Nash Trust stamp lower left
Issued by the Paul Nash Trust and printed by The Print Workshop, London, in 1975. The plate is with the Tate Gallery Archive.

LITERATURE:
Greenwood, Jeremy. The Wood-Engravings of Paul Nash. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Wood Lea Press, 1997. cat no. G103.

Paul Nash first visited the Kent village of Dymchurch in 1919. A delightful place with much inspiring material for work he subsequently moved his family there in 1921. The lofty broad seawall protects the low lying and ancient area of Romney Marsh from flooding. Running for six kilometres, nine metres high and six metres wide the monumental wall was originally constructed in Roman times with the great Martello towers added in the Napoleonic era after the threat of invasion. Three sluices gates in the wall allowed the water on the wetland to run out at low tide. Nash, who nearly drowned as a child, wrote of his fear and fascination with the sea; ‘cold and cruel waters, usually in a threatening mood, pounding and rattling along the shore’. This feeling of dread can be sensed in his works of Dymchurch with a strange low evening light casting long shadows.

Void, 1918

Edition of 25
Signed, titled and dated

LITERATURE: Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. L2.

The subject of Void’ is the battlefield of Passchendaele. In the centre of the composition the small body of a soldier lies on the pathway, reduced to the form of a discarded jacket. The path leads through the chaos of broken barbed wire fences, tree trunks, and abandoned artillery guns. To the right in the distance the battle continues, bombs are dropped from the plane above and a figure makes its way to safety along the exposed duckboards slanted against the rain. The devastated path however, whilst cratered with shell holes, leads away from the desolation into the distance where the path is unbroken, and the sky is calm.

Void of War, 1918

Edition of 12
Signed and numbered

LITERATURE: Postan, Alexander. The Complete Graphic Work of Paul Nash. London: Secker & Warburg, 1973. cat. no. L7.

It is impossible to tell whether this is a night scene lit by search light or a smoke blackened day. Here the duckboard path navigates a wood shattered by artillery, eerie and threatening in its barrenness. The shell holes have been filled by the heavy rain, creating ponds of filthy shining water, making the landscape completely impassable save for the path. The other six war subjects by Nash are created with chalk whereas this is drawn in lithographic wash.