The_Spectator_April_15_2017

MESSUM’S

28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Tel: +44 (0)20 7437 5545 http://www.messums.com

John Northcote Nash

R A NEAC, 1893–1977

The Woodpile

oil on board 50 x 61 cms 19^1 ⁄ 8 x 24 ins

Throughout the 1930s, Nash took painting trips throughout East Anglia and Essex in pursuit

of a kind of creative sanctuary from the London art scene. Almost self-taught (his formative

teacher was his brother Paul Nash), he remained at heart a landscape painter, a genre at the

time deemed somewhat retrograde. In 1943, he settled permanently at Bottengoms Farmhouse,

near Wormingford. Walter Sickert had famously declared this part of the Stour Valley “sucked

dry” by the talents of Gainsborough and Constable, but Nash looked at the surrounding villages

and fields with fresh eyes, seeing only possibilities.