Nash made several renditions of the location, two during 1935, his most productive year in Dorset, and another in 1943 while touring the County with Lance Sieveking. Hilly Landscape (840 in Causey, 26 in Denton), which is clearly a view of Badbury Rings, is very close in composition to Badbury Rings (Causey 821) and most likely drawn soon after, more or less from the same location. With its pyramidal copse of trees and angular skyline, the visual language of 821 is rather unusual in Nash's work at this time. It was included in the Dorset Shell Guide (p.7) and also reproduced in Bystander 13 May 1936. Entranced by the atmosphere of the hill fort, Nash wrote poetically in the Guide:

“I remember nothing so beautifully haunted as the wood in Badbury Rings…Beyond the outer plateau the rings heave up and round in waves 40 feet high. A magic bird in a haunted wood, an ancient cliff washed by a sea changed into earth.” (Paul Nash, Dorset Shell Guide, 1936)

The third of Nash's renditions of the earthwork was painted during or soon after his tour of the County with Lance Sieveking in 1943. Seen from a significant distance, it may well have been painted with the help of the binoculars which Nash was using as an aid at that time.

Amongst the large portfolio of black and white photographs taken by Paul Nash (1,267 negatives held by the Tate Gallery, TGA 7050 PH) there are several of the wooded interior of Badbury Rings (see for example TGA 7050 PH / 1079, 1080, 1081) dated 1935.They were presented by the Paul Nash Trust in 1970. See Simon Grant, Informal Beauty: The Photographs of Paul Nash (Tate Publishing: London, 2016)

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive/items/tga-7050ph-1081/nash-black-and-white-negative-interior-of-woods-badbury-rings-dorset

Nash works relating to Badbury Rings

Paul Nash 

Badbury Rings 

1935

Pencil and watercolour

28.6 x 38.7 cm

Exhibited Redfern Gallery, 1936 (no.29). This was the version specifically drawn for the Dorset Shell Guide (1936).

References: 

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no. 821

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.10

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Paul Nash

Hilly Landscape

1935

Pencil and watercolour

29.2 x 39.4 cm

Margaret Nash dated this 1931, but it is highly likely to have been made during the same drawing excursion that produced Causey 821. A watercolour purporting to be by Nash, reproduced on a greetings card by the Rather Good Art Company (2023) strongly resembles the composition, although (somewhat confusingly) its given title is Wittenham Clumps (1935).

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no. 821

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.10

Paul Nash

Badbury Rings

1943

Pencil and watercolour

28.6 x 39.4 cm

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.1125

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.79