Although Nash made no paintings or drawings of the cove of the nearby village, he explored the coastline thereabouts and was drawn to the extraordinary remains of the ancient, fossilised forest that lines the cliffs a short walk east of the village. Andrew Causey wrote of these explorations:

‘Trees are again pictured in connection with the sea in Stone Forest, the design loosely based on a postcard Nash had of the Fossil Forest at Lulworth … he used the dark holes as sinister openings to contrast with the upward-reaching motion of the trees in the same way the shell-holes in his war drawings had been contrasted with scarred and shorn trees … he was concerned with the primitive in man seen through pictorial analogues in nature.’

(Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980. pp.276-9)

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 ruins of the nearby Lulworth Castle(see for example TGA 7050 PH / 176) dated 1936-37. See also: https://www.abbottandholder-thelist.co.uk/paul-nash/

Nash works relating to Lulworth.

Stone Forest

1937

Pencil, chalk and watercolour on paper

58.7 x 38.7 cm

The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

References:

Anthony Bertram, Paul Nash, the Portrait of an Artist (London: Faber and Faber, 1955) p.100.

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1980. Catalogue no.910

Penny Denton, Seaside Surrealism, Peveril Press, Durlston, 2002.

Catalogue No. 68

Paul Nash Watercolours, 1919-1946, Another life, Another world, Piano Nobile, 9 September - 22 November 2014.