|
JOHN NASH : ARTIST AND COUNTRYMAN
By Andrew Lambirth
Unicorn Press. 352
pages. £40. ISBN 978-1-916495-70-8
Reviewed by Jim Burns
John Nash was for many years overshadowed by his brother, Paul.
Perhaps he still is in most people’s eyes? Paul Nash’s reputation as
a war artist has been reinforced over the years with various
exhibitions and books about both the First and Second World Wars.
There are classic images that seem to capture the essence of
the grim trench war of 1916, or the spectacle of aeroplanes leaving
vapour trails in the sky as they weave around each other during the
dog-fights of 1940. Paul Nash also has some kudos attached to his
name because of his involvements with British Surrealism in the
1930s. Authors often like to write books about movements in art, and
being linked to one or other of them tends to ensure that a painter
will have a place in such surveys. There is, too, the fact that Paul
Nash “was more worldly, more ambitious, and much more alert to art
politics than his brother”.
I can’t imagine John Nash ever getting too involved with groups and
movements, though he certainly had friends in the world of the arts.
And, when it came to portraying war on canvas he did spend months as
a war artist towards the end of the Great War. But before that he
had served on the front line and taken part in some of the fierce
fighting of the time. When it came to representing the situation in
France his “Over the Top” is probably a realistic portrayal of how
it was. The soldiers, having clambered out of their trench are
trudging toward enemy lines, their heads bowed, and their rifles
carried loosely at their side and not aggressively. They give the
appearance of exhaustion and resignation as they walk wearily into
what is certain to be sustained enemy shelling and machine-gun fire.
Once out of the army it became obvious that there was more to JN
(I’m going to follow Andrew Lambirth and refer to JN rather keep
spelling out his full name) than as a minor war artist. Born in
1893, he showed some early skills at drawing, but unlike his older
brother (born 1889) he had little or no formal training as an
artist, and was more or less self-taught. He was said to have later
expressed regret about not attending art school, but Lambirth is of
the opinion that Nash never really felt inadequate for not having
that experience: “What could it have taught him that he didn’t learn
for himself or absorb from friends and contemporaries?”
Nature was JN’s chief inspiration, though he clearly picked up ideas
from other painters. And there is “a convincing argument for the
influence of Cezanne in the 1920s”. But it his landscapes that are
probably what he is best-known for, and they engaged “with a
simplification of landscape forms which nevertheless enhanced their
significance”. What he was after was producing a painting that was
simply good to look at, and not meant to “educate” the viewer. In
Lambirth words: “The artist’s job is to entertain and give pleasure,
not to instruct”. In an age where the political seemingly has to run
through everything, the continuing popularity of JN’s work among
non-specialists lies in the fact that people just like to look at
it. The same can surely also be said about the art of Eric
Ravilious, a friend of JN’s who tragically died young.
Both artists took the real world, whether rural or urban, as
their model, and then invested it with their own idiosyncratic
colourings and designs
JN had some success prior to the First World War, particularly as a
water-colourist, and joined the New English Art Club, which had been
established as a counter-force to what was seen as the establishment
dominating the
An idea of JN’s character can be gained from Lambirth’s comments
about him dressing “unobtrusively, more like a plantsman or
countryman than as a painter”. In this, he was akin to Robert Bevan,
who Lambirth describes as “ like a countryman familiar with dogs and
horses than a bohemian artist”. It’s an interesting area to explore,
this need to portray oneself as just an ordinary person and not a
pretentious poet or painter. It doesn’t only extend to outward
appearance, but can be heard in conversation, as when JN stated that
he preferred gardening and fishing to painting. It may not be as
pronounced now as it used to be, colourful and casual dress being
more in evidence in society generally, but I suspect that a kind of
bluff, down-to-earth Englishness still persuades many people that a
person is basically sound. But beneath the conventional façade, JN
did live a bohemian life in some ways, often short of money and with
a reputation as a philanderer.
When JN finished his wartime service, as an infantryman and later a
war artist, he soon settled into the life of a fulltime artist.
There doesn’t seem to have been any major changes in what he aimed
for, and a watercolour called “The Cornfield” (“The whole
composition is superbly managed and patterned with the glorious
tensity that comes over farmland with ripeness and repletion at
harvest time”, in Lambirth’s words) establishes the pattern of what
he mostly did throughout his lifetime. Aside from the very early
lessons he may have drawn from French Post-Impressionists, or his
English contemporaries, it’s probably true to say that JN never
essentially altered his basic style. Lambirth refers to “The
Cornfield” as “an image of pastoral idyll, and thus very dear to an
Englishman’s heart”. I’m not sure I can accept the generalisation
that all Englishmen share a liking for a “pastoral idyll” and it
tends to make me feel that people in the home counties don’t see the
rest of the country, especially in the industrial North and
Midlands, as really
Let me say at this point that I’ve no complaint to make about JN or
any other artist establishing and maintaining a style throughout a
lifetime. As long as they continue to sustain a high level of
technical competence, and an imaginative interpretation of
subject-matter, it doesn’t seem essential that they should “make it
new”. This is true of representational art, though I have my doubts
if it is applied to abstraction, where there are fewer places to go.
After the Abstract Expressionists, and the St Ives artists in
JN was included in the English section of the Venice Biennial in the
1920s, worked briefly as an art critic for the
London Mercury, and
contributed humorous drawings to various publications. It’s
significant that he no longer felt a need to align himself with any
group or movement, and he went on the attack against them, writing
that: “There is a distemper prevalent amongst artists of today. I
refer to the mania for group forming”. He pointed out that groups
always had a spirit of dissension which led to “disgruntled
diaspora” and characterised what he thought was “an inherent
distrust of each other which all artists seem to possess”. He might
have added that ambition and ego are usually not in short supply
among artists and writers. JN was not often thought of as being
saddled with either affliction, though later in life Vera Coker,
wife of Peter Coker, a painter who became friendly with JN,
described him as “very self-centred, with quite a high opinion of
himself”.
Earning a living as an artist often requires turning to various
activities in order to make money. Artists teach (JN’s students
often remembered him as usually positive and helpful in his comments
on their work), they provide illustrations for commercial
enterprises, and they experiment with different techniques. JN
became highly proficient with wood-engravings and produced many of
them as book and magazine illustrations. Lambirth remarks that
critics have pointed out that “only twice had
JN’s chief interest was always in landscapes, and he was constantly
looking for new places to focus on with pen, pencil, and brush. In
this he was assisted by his wife, Christine, who was far more
practical about everyday matters than he was. But I ought not to
ignore JN’s skill as a botanical illustrator, and he produced
numerous illustrations for books and magazines: “JN became expert at
depicting the decorative structure of plants and flowers. Although
always text-book accurate, he was also able to draw plants as if
they were really alive and capable of wilting or flourishing”. The
accompanying illustrations to Lambirth’s comments certainly appear
(to my admittedly town-bred eye) to bear out the accuracy of his
assertions.
With his landscapes there is no doubt that JN was not a mere
copyist, and the overall lay-out of a painting determined what was
left in or left out. Once, when he asked a student why he had shown
some daffodils in a painting, the student replied, “Because they
were there”. The person observing this incident thought that JN
would have left them out: “He simplified a subject”. When I look at
something like the fine 1953 oil painting, “Frozen Pond” or the
equally impressive 1950 “A Barn Wormingford”, and the ravishing 1959
“Wild Garden, Winter”, and ”A Pond Near Cambridge”,
I’m minded to reflect on what may or may not have been edited
out of the pictures as JN established their pictorial structures. It
was certainly rare for figures to appear in his landscapes, for
example, even if they had been there as he sketched what he could
see. Or wanted to see?
He did move way from gardens and ponds and farms, and painted some
non-rural scenes, though not of the streets of the cities. I don’t
think that he would have wanted to paint pictures of shop-fronts and
bustling shoppers. He did like to look around dock-areas in
John Nash died in 1977. There had been a retrospective exhibition of
his work at the
|
