Page 55 - Studio International - November 1973

of John Marin in 1948, the American critic Eates's). This must have been an obstacle to the
Supplement Clement Greenberg suggested that the quality appreciation of his work in the last decade or so,
though one can understand why those who
of Nash's use of the water-colour technique
`approached' that of the American painter. That know him should have wished to record that
Autumn I should wish to express the relationship the which must have seemed to them to underwrite
his charm. I respond as badly to being told by
other way around (if at all) is perhaps merely to
illustrate what Greenberg meant when, in a Miss Eates that Nash 'was not merely a fine
1973: later essay, he described both painters as having full meaning of the words', as I would to being
painter, but also a great and noble spirit in the
`proved unexportable so far'. But that was in
1958. I would now know where to go in London told that he painted well because he was a
new and to find works by Marin; where would I go in because I belong to 'a generation tainted with
gentleman; and I doubt whether this is entirely
New York to find works by Nash ? It's not
even that easy in London, where Moore, American barbarism, haunted by a feeling of
recent virtually inescapable. insecurity, and dominated by violence' which
Sutherland, Bacon and many others are
has 'failed to grasp the fundamental values of
There is a comparative wealth of documentary the purely contemplative art, that expressed the
art books material on Nash for those who care to seek basic qualities of Nash both as man and as
it out: 'Outline', the autobiography of Nash's
painter'. It is perhaps because I am as anxious
early years, a substantial biography by to protect my experience of Nash's work as Miss
Anthony Bertram (1955), the Memorial Eates is to protect hers. I prefer his wit, which
Volume, published on the occasion of the Tate's could often be sharp, to his whimsy, and his
retrospective in 1948, material deposited in the commonsense and matter-of-factness to his
Victoria and Albert Museum, including several `poetry'. Many of his most successful metaphors
volumes of press cuttings and collected articles, seem to me to be set up in a spirit of mild
a photographic record of works, copies of letters amusement. The poetic faculty seems to
written by Nash and a memoir by his widow, a operate most successfully in his work when it is
Senior artists catalogue of the complete graphic work most pervasive; i.e. when it is detectable as a
Paul Nash; the Master of the Object z889-1946 (published recently), and the collected quality in the paint, as it is in The Shore of 1923,
by Margot Eates. 156 pp plus 144 plates in correspondence between Nash and Gordon Wood on the Downs of 1929, Monster Shore of
colour and monochrome. John Murray. £6. Bottomley, spanning the years 1910 to 1946 and 1939 and in the superb landscapes in oils of the
Sickert by Wendy Baron. 398 pp with 302 published as 'Poet and Painter'. (If you can early 1940s, of which two, Landscape of the
monochrome illustrations. Phaidon. £18.50. overcome the inevitable embarrassment at the Vernal Equinox and November Moon, are
whimsical 'period' tone of much of the reproduced in colour in the present monograph.
While holidaying recently near what Paul Nash correspondence, the latter volume provides a Appreciation of Nash's work will depend not
called Surrealist Swanage my attention was moving insight of the development of romantic upon personal loyalties so much as upon the
caught by an image which Nash both greenery-yallery youth into celebrated senior development of instrumentalities for discussing
photographed and painted some 35 years ago; artist.) For all this, the present monograph, the quality of his painting in recognizance of the
the dry-stone walls at Worth Matravers which commissioned by the Nash Trust and aided by fact that he was not a painter of abstract
run beside the roads over the Purbeck Hills like the Mellon Foundation, is a welcome addition. pictures (and is therefore not easily caught by
waves along the breakwaters a couple of miles That is to say that the book is beautifully current vocabulary).
away. Paul Nash's earlier response to those same produced, the illustrations are good, and the Incidentally the quality of those late
scenes offers me a pleasure in the coincidence of chronology and catalogue of works provide landscapes has surely much to do with the
two memories - of the landscape itself and of useful basic information. The choice of colour security of Nash's relationship to insular
the art - which no outlandish painting, be it plates very definitely favours the image of Nash traditions upon which, after 1917, he was never
American or French, can ever supersede. (A as essentially a watercolour painter, whose wholly dependent. Miss Eates seems anxious to
watercolour version of Nash's Stone Sea is poetic gifts were less eloquently expressed in emphasize Nash's total abandonment of his
illustrated as plate 79a of Miss Eates's study. oils. Indeed, at the conclusion of her study of early 'Pre-Raphaelite dreams', and Gordon
Paul Nash himself wrote and illustrated the Nash's development Margot Eates spells it out: Bottomley fares badly at her hands as a mentor
first Shell Guide to Dorset in 1935; his `Essentially .... the greatness of Paul Nash lies whose influence 'prolonged this period of
photograph of a stone wall at Worth Matravers in his watercolours'. I've never entirely agreed artistic immaturity'. In fact a mutual and
is reproduced on p. 38 of the second Shell with this - for all the quality of the best of the informed interest in the PRB, particularly
Guide.) Such metaphors as that expressed by watercolours, from the war paintings of 1917-18 Rossetti, was a firm bond between Nash and
the stone sea were at the root of Nash's art and through to the last landscapes of 1944-6. Look Bottomley to the end of the former's life. It may
of his perception of the natural world for at at the Pillar and Moon landscape in the Tate: also have been Bottomley who first drew Nash's
least two decades before these metaphors at his best Nash controlled tone and touch in oil attention to the work of Samuel Palmer, an
became clichés in the hands of Moore and the with a combination of firmness and delicacy interest which can be seen revived to superb
painters of the forties. Nash died in 1946, in his entirely appropriate both to his very effect, some 3o years later, in the early-forties
57th year; had he lived only another decade he sophisticated understanding of the traditions landscapes. The two men certainly corresponded
might have considerably strengthened those within which he felt himself to be working and to enthusiastically on the subject of Palmer and
aspects of the insular traditions of painting his particular imaginative response in the face of Calvert in 1941. Miss Eates surely renders no
which survived the fifties only as means to evocative themes. service to Nash in writing of him with so much
indifferent art. As it is, his work must be all but The image of Nash purveyed by many of his admiration when she offers so little as means to
unknown to today's art students, among whom a most loyal defenders - of whom Miss Eates is evaluate his practise in terms of his profession.
score of second-rate painters, associated with undoubtedly one - is that of the painter-poet, She seems far more concerned with his social
but not central to the quality of American art in who occasionally allowed his 'poetic intuition' than with his professional life; in a personal
the later forties and fifties, are talked of as to be 'diverted by his intellect', to the detriment memoir this would perhaps be appropriate but
figures of unquestionable importance. Writing of his art (the phrases in quotes are Miss as a means of accompanying a series of plates

203