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Presentation: Framed
SN: 124
Signed in pencil, Pencil and watercolour, 13S X 17F ins. (34 X 45.5 cms.)
Provenance: Percy Horton; thence by descent

Bures, located on the border between South Suffolk and North Essex, is divided by the river Stour, which forms the county boundary. The artist Percy Horton, to whom this watercolour belonged, was a friend and contemporary of Nash; both taught at the Ruskin School of Art, and both had a particular attachment to the East Anglian landscape. In 1931 Nash rented a cottage at Wiston-by-Nayland, a village on the Stour, near Bures. Here he painted regularly, before buying and moving to Bottengoms Farmhouse, in Wormingford, near Colchester, after being demobilised in 1944. In his monograph on Nash, Rothenstein wrote: 'his environment was a continuing source of inspiration, in particular, as it always had been, the presence, and here it was all but omnipresence, of water, whether spring, pond, waterfall, stream or ditch.' John Rothenstein, John Nash, 1983, p. 86. A Suffolk Landscape, an oil of 1937, was bought by the Tate in 1939, soon after John Rothenstein became director. This is one of twelve works held by the Tate.
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Presentation: Framed
SN: 3944
Lithograph
34.4 x 15 cm
Published by the Poetry Bookshop, (second series, no. 18); poem by W.H.Davies with decorations by John Nash.

Provenance: Peyton Skipwith

Thumbnail panels:

John Nash 1893-1977

Painter, mainly of landscape, in oil and watercolours, wood engraver and illustrator. Born in London, the brother of the painter Paul Nash, he worked initially as a local journalist. Encouraged by Paul, he turned to art, remaining self-taught. He exhibited with his brother at the Dorien Leigh galleries, 1913, and had his first one-man show at the Goupil Gallery, 1921. By that time Nash was established as a member of the Friday Club, LG, and Cumberland Market Group. In 1914 he started to paint in oil and this, combined with his experience with the Artists' Rifles, led to some fine pictures when he was made an Official War Artist in 1918. Oppy Wood, Evening, and Over the Top: The 1st Artists' Rifles at Marcoing, both in the Imperial War Museum, are amongst the most memorable war images. Nash was also an Official War Artist during World War II, when he was attached to the Admiralty. Between the wars Nash established himself as an extremely fine painter of the English landscape using a style that was less dramatic than his brother Paul's, but nevertheless winning the support and patronage of, amongst others, John Rothenstein. In 1937 he painted a mural for the Paris Exhibition. Nash taught at Ruskin School, Oxford, 1922-27, and for two long periods before and after World War II, at the Royal College of Art. Demobilised in 1944, he lived in a country cottage, Bottengoms Farmhouse, in Wormingford, near Colchester, where he developed his expertise as a plantsman and painted the East Anglian countryside. The Tate among many public galleries holds his work. In 1951 he was elected RA, where a major show of his work was held in 1967.

Selected literature John Rothenstein, John Nash, Macdonald & Co., 1983.