The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash

Book excerpt: Paul Nash (1889-1946) has long been admired as one of the outstanding English landscape painters of this century. Nash has a deep affinity for such favourite sites in Southern England as the rolling downland near Swanage, the gaunt coastline at Dymchurch, the enigmatic stone circles at Avebury, and the twin hills in Oxfordshire known as the Wittenham Clumps which became his ultimate 'Place' and the focal symbol of his art. In this book Roger Cardinal surveys the full range of Nash's work, from the ravaged Flanders landscapes of World War One to the spectacular aerial battles of World War Two and the meditative late oils, his final materpieces.