Paul Nash: The Spirit of Place

The Daniel Katz Gallery presents an exhibition of the work of the celebrated British artist, Paul Nash (1889-1946). Famed for his vivid imagination and early investigation into the familiar English landscape around him, Nash sensed a world beyond the immediate, ‘haunted by old gods long forgotten’. The exhibition explores the value of place in Nash’s life, and how it fostered and developed his eye for the uncanny and otherworldly. Comprising twelve important works by Nash spread across his artistic career, from the Romantic influence of William Blake to Victorian illustration and the development of the surreal in his later years, the exhibition examines the man behind each work and its unique place in the canon of Modern British art of the twentieth century. The journey begins with Tree Study (1913) a remarkable pen and ink drawing of Nash’s childhood garden. Drawn at the youthful age of 24, it depicts a Romanticised Edenic landscape, evocative of a bygone era, while also communicating an unsettling air through the suggestion of human presence. Important oil paintings from the 1930s include the extraordinary ‘The Opening’ (1930-31), a surrealistic masterpiece in which ambiguous layers of reality are presented through an open window or door into a dreamlike and unsettling coastal realm. An official war artist in both World Wars, Nash and his art were hugely affected by both. Cumulus Head (1944) exhibits the abstract and surreal. An intriguing cloud study on the one hand, it nevertheless displays Nash’s fascination with wartime flight and the advent of a new and terrifying nuclear age. In focusing on a small private collection of rarely seen paintings and drawings, alongside works from the gallery’s inventory, we consider the continuing spirit and stylistic influence of this great artist on other painters later in the 20th century, shown with analogous works by Edward Burra, Algernon Newton, Keith Vaughan and John Minton.