1933

As a young boy, Paul Nash knew the Purbecks well. From the age of 11 his family had travelled to Swanage each summer to stay at the seaside town. In Outline, his compilation of autobiographic writings, Nash recounts one boyhood episode in the county, pursuing butterflies with a net:

‘I had come far afield. Beyond the boundary hedges the downs, threaded with juniper and other scrub, mounted to the spine of the great headland that arched up against the blue sky. From the summit a precipitous chalk cliff fell sheer to the sea. The still afternoon was disturbed only by the think cries of the gulls. I was in Dorset, where we now came every year for our summer holidays. The cliff before me was Ballard head rising up in majesty over Swanage Bay.’ (Paul Nash, Outline, An Autobiography and Other Writings, London: Faber and Faber, 1949, p.121)

Some thirty years later Paul Nash and his wife Margaret, were invited to stay with Hilda and Gilbert Felce in their new home, Whitecliff, an imposing if slightly secluded stone farmhouse on the north-facing slopes of Ballard Down, overlooking Swanage Bay. The Nashs had first met Hilda on the Riviera in 1925. She, and her husband Gilbert were to prove a lifeline and an anchor during an increasingly agitated period for the painter.

By the early Thirties, the Nashes had been leading an insecure and peripatetic existence, moving in and out of temporary lodgings, short of reliable income, and restlessly seeking a congenial environment for Paul’s painting, but also for his fragile health. In March 1933 he had contracted influenza followed by a severe bout of bronchial asthma, a condition which blighted his health thereafter, even at times endangering his life.

Paul was smitten by his surroundings: enamoured of his recollections of Dorset. Although still convalescent and unable to stand for long to make his customary notes and drawings, he recorded the sights and sites around and beyond Swanage on his ‘new eye’, an American-made No.1A pocket Kodak series 2, gifted to him by Margaret in 1931.

Only two rather modest watercolours that reference Dorset were painted by Nash in 1933. The first of these is listed in Causey’s definitive record (No.774) as ‘Fallen Trees, Savernake Forest’ but the composition clearly relates to the 1934 oil Strange Coast (No.788) in which the fallen trees are in the sea. It also corresponds closely to the chalk and watercolour image of Ballard Down (No.823) made two years later and now in the Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford.

Nash had travelled straight from Savernake, near Devizes to stay with the Felce family at Whitecliff Farm in the late summer of 1933. So, it is possible that the that the watercolour fuses the inland Wiltshire landscape with the sea views from Ballard Down. In Nash’s work of that decade, undulating landforms were often equated with rolling or breaking waves in the sea.

Nash’s other representation of the Purbecks from 1933 is the small pencil and watercolour image ‘Felled Trees on Ballard Down’ (No.775), which was clearly made during his inaugural stay at the farm.

1933

Fallen Trees

Pencil, chalk, and watercolour

H 26.0 x W 36.8 cm

Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (gift of A.E. Anderson, 1935)

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.774, p.425.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.1.

1933

Felled trees on Ballard Down

Pencil and watercolour, H 19.0 x W 26.7 cm

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.775, p.425.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.2.

1934

Paul and Margaret had spent the first six months of 1934 touring France, Gibraltar, Spain and Africa in the hope of finding a hospitable climate for Paul’s ailing health. Although the weather was indifferent and brought little relief in his underlying condition, he met many of the leading artists of the avant-garde – Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso – as well as several of the Surrealists.

Familiar with the Modern movements emanating out of continental Europe, Paul’s artistic interests remained wide and varied, and he experimented with abstraction, constructivism, and surrealism. He was drawn to the visual language and iconography of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, influences that would work their way into his imagery and compositions in the years ahead.

Collegiate and sociable, Paul was drawn to several artist’s groups and assumed a leadership role in creating Unit One, intended to bring together like-minded artists, architects and writers keen to articulate a collective vision of English modernism. He and sculptor Henry Moore met often, energised by an ambition to put ‘new life and impetus’ into the disparate strands of contemporary creative practice that were then appearing across Britain.

Unit One embraced the two dominant currents – abstraction and Surrealism - in modern art, currents that Nash himself embraced in unequal measure through the decade. Paul announced the launch of the group in a letter to The Times newspaper (12 June 1933) asserting boldly that the grouping was intended ‘to stand for the expression of a truly contemporary spirit, for that thing which is recognised as peculiarly of today in painting, sculpture and architecture’. (Paul Nash, The Times, published 13 June 1933)

Their first and only group exhibition was held in 1934, accompanied by a book, Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. With an introduction by the influential critic and poet Herbert Read it consisted of statements by all those in the group – amongst them Edward Burra, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore – along with photographs of their work. (Herbert Read (ed.) Unit One: the modern movement in English architecture, painting and sculpture. London: Cassell, 1934)

Despite its brief period of activity, the group was an important marker for English modernism and established London as a centre for critical debate and artistic practices. For Paul Nash it helped crystallise the directions he needed to take as he picked his way through the polarising debates of the day:

“I feel now I am beginning to find my way between the claims of ‘Abstractions’ and pure interpretation. As you know, I am far too interested in the character of landscape and natural forms generally - from a pictorial point of view – ever to abandon painting Nature of some kind or other. But I want a wider aspect, a different angle of vision as it were.” (Paul Nash to Anthony Bertram, 14 April 1934)

After their extended tour of Europe, the Nashes returned to a cottage in Owley near Romney Heath, but it proved too damp for Paul’s asthmatic condition, and they sought a more hospitable location.

In the Autumn of 1934, Hilda Felce offered them Whitecliff as an extended retreat while she and her husband, Gilbert, were overseas. The Nash’s spent five months, from October 1934 until February 1935 in the large stone building overlooking Swanage Bay. In a letter to his friend and fellow war veteran, Lance Sieveking, Paul expressed his relief at being offered such a home, however temporary:

“This is a very comfortable and soigne and generally delectable house and grounds we’ve been lent just under the downs and blinking at the sea. I have a good room to work in and am at last getting some new work done and feeling a lot better as well.” (Paul Nash to Lance Sieveking, 4 November 1934)

In Outline, his autobiographical writings (p.225) he wrote summarily, but with profound appreciation: “We are lent a house by the sea. Blessed escape. Enchantment of the Ballard.”

1934

Event on the Downs

oil on canvas, H 51 x W 61 cm

Government Art Collection, accession number 8536

Purchased from the Leicester Galleries, 1969

References:

Anthony Bertram, Paul Nash, the Portrait of an Artist (London: Faber and Faber, 1955) p.244.

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.784, p.426.

Margot Eates, The Master of the Image 1889-1946 (London: John Murray, 1973) p.63, 70, 126.

George Wingfield Digby, Meaning and Symbol in Three Modern Artists (London: Faber and Faber, 1955) p.125, 177.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.3.

1934

Stone Tree

Oil on board, H 58.5 x 40.6 cm

References:

Anthony Bertram, Paul Nash, the Portrait of an Artist (London: Faber and Faber, 1955) p.242.

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.787, p.426.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.4.

1934

Strange Coast

oil on canvas, H 48.3 x 71.1 cm

References:

Anthony Bertram, Paul Nash, the Portrait of an Artist (London: Faber and Faber, 1955) p.244.

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.788, p.426.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.5.

1934

Monolith, Swanage

Dimensions and medium not known

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.788, p.428.

Penny Denton, ‘Seaside Surrealism’ Paul Nash in Swanage (Durlstone, 2002) cat.no.6.

Margot Eates, The Master of the Image 1889-1946 (London: John Murray, 1973) p.64.

1934

Landscape Composition

Tempera on Hardboard, H 12.7 x W 15.2 cm

References:

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash Catalogue Raisonné (Oxford, 1980) cat. no.779, p.425.

Note: this is a smaller version, a study for the larger composition for Objects in Relation

1934. No.816 in Causey.