Paul Nash (1889-1946)

Landscape of the Malvern Distance

Paul Nash studied at the Slade before serving with the Hampshire Regiment and as an Official War Artist during the First World War. He became one of the most significant figures in post-war British art as he sought to combine his interest in Surrealism and abstraction with his love of the English landscape.

Nash was fascinated by the idea of spirit of place and made intense connections with favourite locations. Paintings like this one, made at the end of this life, are charged by his sense of approaching mortality and fascination with nature's cycle of decay and renewal. Nash's poor health would not allow him to walk far so he used binoculars to bring landscape features closer, in this case the Malvern Hills viewed from a friend's house.

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