 |
| John Nash c1930 © National Portrait Gallery |
John Northcote Nash, the son of a barrister and younger brother of the war artist Paul Nash (a series on Paul Nash will follow) was born at Ghuznee Lodge, in Kensington, London in 1893. Educated at Wellington College, John started work as a trainee journalist but his life changed when his brother, who had enrolled at the Slade, brought home two fellow students, Claughton Pellew and Dora Carrington, who inspired him to become an artist.
John Nash did not receive any formal training, following his brother’s advice that it would ruin his unique vision of landscape. It would be unfair however to describe John Nash as an amateur artist especially after the notable success of his first exhibition in 1913 at the Dorien Leigh Gallery in Pelham Street in London.
During the First World War, in 1916, Nash joined the ‘Artists Rifles’ before becoming an Official War Artist in 1918. From 1919 he then lived at Whiteleaf in Buckinghamshire where he became part of the renaissance of English book illustration. During the 1920s Nash taught at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford and remained a teacher until the end of his life, inspiring many, including some of the best Kew artists. During most of the interwar years John Nash and his wife lived at Meadle in Buckinghamshire.
In 1940 he was commissioned as an Official War Artist in the Royal Marines, a role he did not especially enjoy, preferring to paint the English landscape, which he did after the war. From 1922 Nash had made many visits to Essex and rented a summer cottage at Wormingford, near Colchester and in 1945 he and his wife bought Bottengoms Farm where they lived until they died.
Nash was made an ARA in 1940 and RA in 1951 and was appointed CBE in 1964. In 1967 he was given the first ever retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy by a living painter. John Nash’s work can be found in many private and public collections such as the Tate Gallery, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.
For more information on John Nash, and for earlier works, see part 1 also.
This is part 2 of a 4-part series on the works of John Nash:
1925 Ovid's Elegies translated by Christopher Marlowe,
together with the Epigrams of Sir John Davies:
 |
| Ovid's Elegies Title Page |
 |
| Ovid's Elegies wood engraving |
 |
| Ovid's Elegies wood engraving |
 |
| Ovid's Elegies wood engraving |
 |
| Ovid's Elegies wood engraving |
 |
| Ovid's Elegies wood engraving |
 |
| 1927 Canterbury Bells and other Summer Flowers wood engraving 19.5 x 13.5 cm |
 |
| 1927 Common Buttercup, Gold Knots, Upright Crowfoot wood engraving 55 x 39 cm |
 |
| 1927 Anemone Pulsatilla wood engraving 14.2 x 10.5 cm |
 |
| 1927 Arum wood engraving 15.1 x 11.3 cm |
 |
| 1927 Datura wood engraving 16.5 x 12.6cm |
 |
| 1927 Foxglove wood engraving 15.3 x 11.1 |
 |
| 1927 Helleborus Foetidus wood engraving 15.7 x 12.7 cm |
 |
| Black Bryony wood engraving |
 |
| Spurge-Laurel wood engraving |
 |
| 1926 Lock Gates, Bath oil on canvas 48 x 63 cm Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK |
 |
| 1926 The Edge of the Plain oil on canvas 50.8 x 61 cm The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK |
 |
| c1926 Avoncliffe from the Aqueduct pencil and watercolour on paper 38.7 x 49.5 cm Tate, London |
 |
| 1927 Frontispiece to The Book of the Tree published by Peter Davies, London wood engraving on paper 14 x 9.5 cm |
 |
| 1930 Study of Salvia Pittieri pencil and watercolour, on paper 34.9 x 24.7 cm |
 |
| 1930 Jug of Flowers oil on canvas 76.3 x 61.1 cm Manchester Art Gallery, UK |
 |
| 1929 Woodland Interior wood engraving |
 |
| 1929 Transmutation, Celeste wood engraving |
 |
| 1929 The Apocrypha, according to ehe Authorised Version Published by Cresset Press wood engraving |
 |
| c1928 Self-Portrait pencil, pen, ink and wash 28 x 23 cm |
 |
| 1928 Frontispiece for Kathleen Woodward’s Jipping Street wood engraving |
 |
| c1927 Suspension Bridge, Bath oil on canvas 61 x 76.4 cm Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK |
 |
| c1927 Canal Bridge, Sydney Gardens, Bath oil on canvas 71 x 76.2 cm Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK |
1930 Céleste and other Sketches by Stephen Hudson
Published by Blackmore Press, London:
 |
| Céleste and other Sketches wood engraving 11.6 x 7.5 cm |
 |
| Céleste and other Sketches wood engraving 11.5 x 7.5 cm |
 |
| Céleste and other Sketches wood engraving 12 x 7.5 cm |
 |
| 1930 The Shepheards Calender by Edmund Spenser published by The Cresset Press title page |
 |
| c1930 Dorset Landscape oil on canvas 49 x 59.5 cm Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, UK |
 |
| late 1930s Rosa Mundi pencil and watercolour 33 x 25 cm |
 |
| before 1931 The Old Canal, Bath oil on canvas 70 x 79 cm Bradford Museums and Galleries, UK |
 |
| 1931 Wakes Colne Mill, Colchester, Essex oil on canvas 50.8 x 81.5 cm New Walk Museum & Art Gallery, Leicester, UK |
 |
| before c1931 Harbour Scene oil on canvas 58.5 x 74 cm BBC England |
 |
| c1931 Park Scene, Great Glemham, Suffolk oil on canvas 61 x 76.5 cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK |
 |
| c1931 The Fisherman wood engraving on paper 11.4 x 13.7 cm Tate, London |
 |
| 1933 Autumn oil on canvas 75 x 59.5 cm Northampton Museums & Art Gallery, UK |
 |
| 1933 Upper Water oil on wood 55.2 x 80.6 cm Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries, UK |
 |
| c1933 Mill Pond Evening oil on canvas 50.8 x 76.5 cm Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK |
 |
| 1934 Iken, Suffolk oil on canvas 60.8 x 76.4 cm H.M. Government Art Collection, London |
 |
| 1935 Flowers and Faces by H.E. Bates title page Canterbury Bells wood engraving |
 |
| 1935 Flowers and Faces by H.E. Bates wood engraving |
 |
| 1935 Flowers and Faces by H.E. Bates wood engraving |
 |
| 1935 Flowers and Faces by H.E. Bates wood engraving |
 |
| 1935 Flowers and Faces by H.E. Bates Marrow and other Autumn Fruit and Flowers wood engraving |
 |
| c1936-37 A Suffolk Landscape oil on canvas 61 x 81.3 cm Tate, London |
 |
| c1937 Ashby's Pond oil on canvas 67.9 x 85 cm Museums Sheffield, UK |
 |
| c1937 Road up to Whiteleaf, Buckinghamshire oil on canvas 51.1 x 76.4 cm Manchester Art Gallery, UK |
 |
| 1938 Cows in the Shade pencil and ink on cream paper 21 x 18.4 cm |
 |
| 1938 The Deserted Sheep Pen oil on canvas 50 x 75 cm Northampton Museums & Art Gallery, UK |
 |
| c1938 Landscape pencil and oil on canvas board 24 x 29 cm |
 |
| 1939 Mountain Landscape with Distant Lake oil on canvas 61 x 76.2 cm Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK |
 |
| c1939 Rocks and Sand Dunes, Oxwich Bay, South Wales pencil and watercolour on paper 39.4 x 57.1 cm Tate, London |
 |
| 1940 Sunderland Flying Boat in a Hangar oil on canvas 62.9 x 75.6 cm Royal Air Force Museum, Cosford, Shropshire, UK |
