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Paul Nash
(1889 - 1946)
Jack in the Box, from Welchman’s Hose, circa 1923
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Paul Nash (1889 - 1946)
Size:
Height – 4.4cm
Width – 5.6cm
Artists at Curwen was the subject of a Tate exhibition with an accompanying book by:Pat Gilmour (Tate Publications:London) in 1977.
Amongst the many well-known graphic artists who worked for the press, were Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Claud Lovat Fraser, Paul Nash and Barnett Freedman. The Press’s output included books, posters and published ephemera.
Welchman’s Hose is a collection of poems by Robert Graves. According to the Fleuron, it contains all the poems written by Graves since Mock Beggar Hall’. The title derives from a passage in John Skelton’s Garden of Laurel:And after conveyance as the world goes, It is no folly to use the Welchman’s Hose.’
The book contains five wood engravings. Paul Nash worked on them as early as 1923. The bird which was also used as a motif to advertise Christmas cards for Elsa Booth of Oxford also appears on the front of the CEMA catalogue for an exhibition of Applied Design by Paul Nash’ in 1943. Also entitled Jack in the Box, this magpie was used by the Curwen Press over a long period of time. Greeting cards were printed from the original wood block and made available from Curwen Prints in the early 1970’s.
We are grateful to Brian Webb for assistance
Painter, printmaker, photographer and writer. Born in London, but brought up in Buckinghamshire, he studied at Chelsea Polytechnic, 1906-07, at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 1908-10 and at the Slade School, 1910-11. He saw action during World War I and was appointed an Official War Artist with the Artists’ Rifles. His perspective on landscape altered radically after this and he produced an outstanding record of the war-torn landscape he had witnessed in France. After World War I Nash like his brother had work reproduced in Art & Letters and The Apple magazine and showed with the little-known Arts League of Service. But in 1923 he suffered a breakdown and recovered at Dymchurch, Kent, where he painted and drew the now-famous sea and its wall. By 1929, he had acquired an interested in photography, both as an art form and as a means for painting. To some extent he was influenced by Surrealism in the mid-1930’s and exhibited in the major Surrealist exhibitions and was also a founder member of the short-lived but influential Unit One in 1933 and as such an acolyte of the French movement Abstraction-Cr ation. Nash was president of the Society of Industrial Artists, 1932’34, on the committee of the first International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries, London in 1936 and held exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery and Leicester Galleries, and showed at the Venice Biennale in 1938.
During World War II he was again appointed an Official War Artist, 1940 and he was involved in the Recording Britain project producing work in a Neo-Romantic style. In a prolific career of exhibiting, his first solo show was held at the Carfax Gallery in 1912. The next few years saw Nash work with Roger Fry at Omega Workshops and he become a member of the Friday Club and LG, NEAC, PS, SWE, LAA and later the AIA. He also exhibited his World War I works at the Goupil Gallery in 1917. His teaching career included time at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford under the leadership of his friend Albert Rutherston, 1920-23, and Royal College of Art, 1924-25 and again 1938-40. The inter-war years saw Nash working on many book illustrations include the coveted Urne Burial and The Garden of Cyrus. Nash’s work reached a wider audience in the 1950’s when some of the drawings were printed by the Curwen Press.
An exhibition of Paul Nash’s paintings, watercolours and graphic works was staged at York City Art Gallery, which toured to Blond Fine Art, London and the Minories, Colchester. The Tate Gallery, AAG, IWM, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Bolton Art Gallery, Brighton Art Gallery, Carlisle Art Gallery, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, the Hepworth Wakefield, Leamington Spa Art Gallery, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, RAF Museum, Hendon, Rugby Museum and Art Gallery, Rye Art Gallery, Swindon Art Gallery, Ulster Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and major museums and art galleries around the world hold his work. His brother was the artist John Nash.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk
