Paul Nash

‡Paul Nash (1889-1946) Corfe Castle Signed and dated 1935 Watercolour over pencil 28.5 x 38.5cm; 11¼ x 15in Provenance: The Redfern Gallery, London, where purchased by James Pilkington, 1935 John Pilkington's sale; Sotheby's London, 13 Dec 1961, where purchased by Arthur Tooth & Son, London J.B.P. Williamson Private Collection, U.K. Bonhams, 30th June 2010, Lot 75 Exhibited: London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, March 1964, no.25 Literature: Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, cat.no.831, p.273 (ill.b&w) Paul Nash was commissioned to write and illustrate a guide to Dorset in the 1930s as part of the Shell County Guides to England & Wales. These were avant garde guides for the new car-owning metropolitan tourist and the founding editor was John Betjeman. Nash's Dorset guide was surrealist in style and this is an original watercolour illustration of Corfe Castle from this guide. Slight old mount stain around the margin, otherwise good Estimate: £5,000 - 8,000 Lot: 403 Sale: Paintings - 12 Dec 2012 LOT TOOLS Print this lot detail How to bid: Once you have saved a lot as a Favourite, it will show below. You can then place a bid on that lot. Simply enter the amount you wish to bid and add it to your 'bid basket'. Your Provisional Bid will appear in your bid basket, right. From there, tick the Conditions of Sale box and click 'Commit Bid'. Once your bid is confirmed, it will move into the Bids page (and disappear from your Favourites). You can also bid from within a Lot page.

44. Paul Nash (1889-1946) A Shell Bursting, Passchendaele, 1918 (Postan 6) the extremely rare lithograph, 1918, signed, dated and inscribed "Albert From Paul" in pencil, a proof aside from the edition of 25, on wove paper, with full margins, 255 x 350 mm (10 x 13 3/4 in) The Battle of Passchendaele took place on the Western Front between June and November 1917, the action, close to Ypres, was considered of extremely high strategic importance. Passchendaele featured the combined Allied forces, with large numbers of British, Australain, Canadian and New Zealand forces taking part in long stretches over its course. Casualties were high, and heavily disputed, though it estimated that both the Allies and the German Empire lost between 200,000 and 400,000 men on each side. Paul Nash had enlisted in the Artist's Rifles (a volunteer regiment which is today known as the SAS) and in February 1917 was sent to the Western Front. Shortly before the Ypres offensive Nash was invalided off the front line with a broken rib, and while recuperating drew on his experiences to produce a series of drawings and paintings documenting his months in the trenches. These works were particularly well received, and when he returned to the Front in early November 1917, it was as an official war artist. From November 1917 onwards he produced some of the most powerful documents of the war, the Battle of Passchendaele being amongst the very first. Nash said of his role: " 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 forever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls."

Paul Nash (British, 1889-1946) In Andrew's Fields, No.1 signed 'Paul Nash' (lower right) ink, chalk and watercolour 28 x 40 cm. (11 x 15 3/4 in.) Executed in 1913 PROVENANCE: W.H. Nash Margaret Nash Lord Eccles Thence by family descent EXHIBITED: London, Dorien Leigh Gallery, Drawings by Paul Nash , 1913, no.25 Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Camden Town Group and Others , 1913, no.101 London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Twentieth-Century Art: a Review of the Modern Movements , 1914, no.187 London, The Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of works by Artists of Fame and Promise II , September-October 1956, no.2 London, The Redfern Gallery, Paul Nash , 1961, no.1 LITERATURE: C.C. Abbott and Anthony Bertram (ed.), Poet and Painter. Being the Correspondence between Gordon Bottomley and Paul Nash 1910-1946 , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1955, p.60 Andrew Causey, Paul Nash , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.351, no.58 (ill.b&w) Writing in his autobiography, Outline , in 1911 Nash explains his decision to 'go in for nature' and therefore leave London for his parental home, Wood Lane House at Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire. The property had been specially built for the family in 1901 and included a plot of about an acre and a half, bordered by great elm trees and carefully planted with maturing shrubbery. The morning room, which Nash used as a studio, looked over what he called the 'bird garden' and gave ample opportunity for the artist to indulge his talents. As Roger Cardinal states, it was the bird garden 'where it all began' and with reference to which Nash wrote 'its magic lay within itself, implicated in its own design and its relationship to its surroundings' (R. Cardinal, The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash , London, 1989, p.63). Nash's intricate knowledge of the garden and surrounding area would lead to his seminal work, The Three (1912), which was sold in these rooms for £86,000 on 8 March 2005. In Andrew's Fields, No.1 was executed in 1913 and bears several of the trademark landscape qualities that Nash expressed during this highly informative period. Trees in particular had always held a spiritual quality for the artist who was drawn to them as a child on visits to Kensington Gardens. In referencing the trees that formed part of the boundary at Wood Lane House, Nash noted that there were 'elms but of such an eccentric growth that they looked like some new species' (Andrew Causey, Paul Nash , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.26). In the present work we see the composition focused on such an elm, which stands tall surveying the landscape as a dominating and privileged witness of life. The shape of the tree itself is accentuated by the arc of birds flying above, themselves an emblem of freedom for the artist. The shadows that are cast across the ground towards the centre of the composition add an element of mystery to the scene and affirm the artist's interest in contrast of light. It is also at this point that Nash began to incorporate further colour to his work, as well displayed in the strong greens and blue of In Andrews Fields, No.1 . The present work confidently expresses Nash's intimate grasp of nature and reveals his ability as a unique artist. The serenity of the scene and that of the few others from this period is juxtaposed with his imminent enlisting as part of the war effort and subsequent deployment to the front.

PAUL NASH Still life no. 1. Woodcut. Signed. Dated 1924. Inscribed "Still life" and further inscribed to the upper margin "From edition 50." 11.5 x 11.5cm The cancelled woodblock is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Accession No.E5198 - 1960. (See illustration)

‡Paul Nash (1889-1946) Hill, plain and clouds, Malvern, Study No. 2, 1945 Signed with a monogram Watercolour over pencil 28 x 38.5cm; 11 x 15in Provenance: From the collection of Dr. John Birch Leicester Galleries, Sir John Parkinson, 1945 Redfern Gallery, Lord Eccles, 1953 Sotheby's, 22nd June 1977, Lot 114 Literature: Margot Eates, Paul Nash, 1973, p.138 Good condition