John Nash | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Nash in 1951,Elliott & Fry | |
| Born | John Northcote Nash (1893-04-11)11 April 1893 London, England |
| Died | 23 September 1977(1977-09-23) (aged 84) Colchester, England |
| Known for | Painting, engraving, illustration |
| Notable work | The Cornfield,Over the Top |
| Spouse | Dorothy Christine Kulenthal |
| Elected | Founder member ofThe London Group |
John Northcote NashCBE, RA (11 April 1893 – 23 September 1977) was a British painter of landscapes and still-lifes, and a wood engraver and illustrator, particularly of botanic works. He was the younger brother of the artistPaul Nash.
_-_%2527Over_The_Top%2527._1st_Artists%2527_Rifles_at_Marcoing%2c_30th_December_1917_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
Nash was born in London, the younger son of lawyer William Harry Nash who served asrecorder ofAbingdon and Caroline Maude Jackson. His mother came from a family with a naval tradition; she was mentally unstable and died in a mental asylum in 1910.[1] In 1901 the family moved toIver Heath, Buckinghamshire.Nash was educated atLangley Place inSlough and afterwards atWellington College, Berkshire. He particularly enjoyed botany, but was unsure which career path to take. At first he worked as a newspaper reporter for theMiddlesex and Berkshire Gazette, in 1910. His brother became a student at theSlade School of Fine Art the same year, and through his brother Paul, metClaughton Pellew andDora Carrington.
John Nash had no formal art training, but was encouraged by his brother to develop his abilities as a draughtsman. His early work was in watercolour and included Biblical scenes, comic drawings and landscapes. A joint exhibition with Paul at the Dorien Leigh Gallery, London, in 1913 was successful, and John was invited to become a founder-member of theLondon Group in 1914. He was an important influence on the work of the artistDora Carrington (with whom he was in love), and some of her works have been mistaken for his in the past.
In 1915 Nash joinedHarold Gilman inRobert Bevan'sCumberland Market Group and in May that year exhibited with Gilman,Charles Ginner andRobert Bevan at theGoupil Gallery.
Nash's health initially prevented him enlisting at the outbreak of the First World War but from November 1916 to January 1918 he served in theArtists Rifles, the unit that his brother had joined in 1914 before taking a commission in theHampshire Regiment. He served as a sergeant at thebattle of Passchendaele and at thebattle of Cambrai. On the recommendation of his brother, Paul worked as an officialwar artist from 1918.
In 1914 Nash began painting in oils with the encouragement of Harold Gilman, whose meticulous craftsmanship influenced his finest landscapes. Nash's most famous painting isOver the Top (oil on canvas, 79.4 x 107.3 cm), now hanging in theImperial War Museum. It is an image of the counter-attack at Welsh Ridge on 30 December 1917, during which the 1st BattalionArtists' Rifles left theirtrenches and pushed towardsMarcoing nearCambrai. Of the eighty men, sixty-eight were killed or wounded during the first few minutes. Nash was one of the twelve spared by the shell-fire, and painted this picture three months later.[2]The Cornfield, held by theTate Gallery, was the first painting Nash completed that did not depict the theme of war. The picture with its ordered view of the landscape and geometric treatment of the corn stooks prefigures his brother Paul'sEquivalents for the Megaliths. Nash said that he and Paul used to paint for their own pleasure only after six o'clock, when their work as war artists was over for the day; hence the long shadows cast by the evening sun across the middle of the painting.
.jpg)
Nash married Carrington's friend Dorothy Christine Kühlenthal in May 1918. She was the daughter of a German chemist who had settled inGerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, and had studied at the Slade. Their only child, William, was born in 1930; he died when he fell out of the back of a moving car in 1935, aged 4.
From 1918 to 1921, Nash lived at Gerrard's Cross, with summer expeditions to theChiltern Hills and Gloucestershire. In 1919 he became a member of theNew English Art Club, and in 1921 he became the first art critic forThe London Mercury.[3] He moved to Meadle, nearPrinces Risborough, also in Buckinghamshire, in 1921, which remained his permanent home until 1944. He frequently visited the valley of theRiver Stour in Essex and Suffolk, where he bought a summer cottage.
After the First World War, Nash's efforts went mainly into painting landscapes.Eric Newton, the art historian said of him 'If I wanted a foreigner to understand the mood of a typical English landscape, I would show him Nash's best watercolours."[4] Emotions concerning the war, however, continued to linger for many years; and this was depicted in his landscape painting. This is particularly evident inThe Moat, Grange Farm, Kimble, oil on canvas, exhibited in 1922. In this brooding landscape the trees and their tendril-like branches envelope the entire picture plane.The dark subtle colours and evening light give the painting a claustrophobic atmosphere. This painting, completed a few years after the war, is characterised by a sense of bleak desolation that suggests the profound introspection that for many followed the devastation of the war. Although he had a great love of nature Nash often used natural subjects to convey powerful and sensitive thoughts concerning the human condition.[5] He was close friends with the writerRonald Blythe, who dedicated his best-selling bookAkenfield to the artist, and who shared his love of the unmanaged forest where fallen trees were left to create their own chaos.[6]
In 1923 Nash became a member of the Modern English Water-colour Society. In 1923 he worked in Dorset and in 1924 in Bath and Bristol. From 1924 to 1929 he taught atThe Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (Oxford). In 1927, he wrote and illustrated a book onPoisonous Plants. From 1934 to 1940 he taught at theRoyal College of Art in London, working on wood engravings and lithographs.[3] In 1939 he visited theGower Peninsula, nearSwansea – the first of many visits to Gower and other parts of Wales.
Nash was also an accomplished printmaker. He was a founder member of theSociety of Wood Engravers in 1920. He produced woodcuts and wood engravings first as illustrations to literary periodicals, and then increasingly as illustrations for books produced by the private presses; these includeJonathan Swift'sDirections to Servants (Golden Cockerel Press, 1925) andEdmund Spenser'sThe Shepheard's Calendar (Cresset Press, 1930). His interest in botanical subjects is shown by his illustrations toH. E. BatesFlowers and Faces (Golden Cockerel Press, 1935)[7] andBob Gathorne-Hardy'sWild Flowers in Britain (Batsford 1938).[8]
At the beginning of theSecond World War Nash served in theObserver Corps, moving to theAdmiralty in 1940 as an official war artist with the rank ofCaptain in theRoyal Marines. He was promoted actingmajor in 1943, and relinquished his commission in November 1944.
After the war, Nash lived atWormingford, in theStour Valley in Essex, where he had bought theElizabethan yeoman's house, Bottengoms in 1944. Nash joined the staff of theRoyal College of Art in 1945 and continued to teach there and later at theFlatford Mill field studies centre. When in Essex, Nash taught at Colchester Art School and in 1946, along withHenry Collins,Cedric Morris,Lett Haines andRoderic Barrett, became one of the founders ofColchester Art Society and later the Society's president.[9] Nash bequeathed his personal library and several of his paintings and engravings toThe Minories, Colchester, who later sold most of the material to theTate.[10][11] Nash became an Associate of theRoyal Academy in 1940 and a full member in 1951. He became aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1964. His retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1967 was the first for a living painter.
Nash suffered from severearthritis in later years. His wife died in 1976; they had been married for over 58 years. Nash died on 23 September 1977, in Colchester. They are both buried at St Andrew's church in Wormingford. The authorRonald Blythe inherited Bottengoms from Nash.[12][13]
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Data from Wikidata