'Century' at Jerwood: John Piper

John Piper, Beach and Starfish, Seven Sisters, mixed media, 1933-4 (Jerwood Collection)

Like many British artists of his generation Piper was inspired from an early age by places – rather than people – and here he has used the avant-garde medium of collage to bring the venerable British genre of coastal painting up to date. Look carefully and you can see how cleverly he has combined paint and other media, like the fabric of the flag and the seashells borrowed from an old book, to make a familiar scene seem new and strange.

Piper is one of 100 modern British artists featured in my exhibition 'Century', which opens at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, in a couple of weeks. In fact we're starting the hang this week (touches wood, tries not to think about railway strikes)...

Artists' Textiles in Bermondsey

Popped into the Fashion and Textile Museum in the old warehouse district that is apparently now known as Bermondsey Village... Fascinating to see how Dali, Picasso and co were marketed to the fashion-conscious, and intriguing how many post-war British artists became involved - although my favourite pieces were the few pre-war block-printed textiles in the first room. There's a nice intro to the exhibition here, with much better photos. Rather less women artists than men, but the other way round I think with the dress designs.

Not many artists could turn a scribbled date into a commercial design.... Viva Picasso!

Salvador Dali a textile designer? 

Produce books like this and who'd want a plastic one?

Wonderful designs from the 1930s

Even Cubists have to earn a crust - this fabric is by Georges Braque

Fun to see designs (by Warhol) 'on the wall' and in frock form... 

I love this photo of Andy Warhol - not only sulky, but young too. Not unlike Julian Assange.

An intriguing take on Paddington Station in simpler times, courtesy of Saul Steinberg, 1952

Steinberg again, with cowboys

And again, with apologies to Picasso?

Fabulous John Piper design...

And a close-up... but did people make dresses out of this? And if so, who wore them?

Artist Textiles: Picasso to Warhol is at the Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey Street, Bermondsey, London, until 17th May 2014 .

Wanted: Good Home for John Piper Mural

John Piper, An Englishman's Home (section), 1951 (Liss Fine Art)

 

Before street art there were murals, and in 20th century Britain numerous public and corporate buildings were decorated inside and out. From Rex Whistler's wall paintings in the dining room at Tate Britain to the Gordon Cullen mural at Greenside Primary School in Hammersmith, murals were a significant feature of our everyday cultural life; there's an evocative piece by Ben Pentreath on the subject here.

At the more humdrum end of the scale we have a mural at the end of our road in Bristol, a massive picture of a balloon floating over the landscape; it's painted on the side of a pub overlooking a green and, like murals everywhere, it is gradually fading. The Twentieth Century Society is currently campaigning to preserve what it can of the thousand-plus murals painted in the decades after World War Two.

An Englishman's Home fills one wall of the gallery at 22 Old Bond St

Given our climate and the upheavals of the past century it isn't surprising that so many murals have disappeared, but some have survived. Among the stunning pictures on show at the Fine Art Society are several large works commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain and painted on panels rather than directly onto walls. There were no doubt good practical reasons for this, but one perhaps unforeseen result is that the murals have been preserved.

There are dramatic pieces by Peter Lanyon, Edward Bawden, Barbara Jones and Alan Sorrell, but the mural that really steals the show is John Piper's epic architectural painting, 'An Englishman's Home'. As you can see from my rather poor photos, this is a fabulously huge picture, painted in oils on 42 panels. Exhibited in 1951 it subsequently languished in an Essex barn for years before being displayed for the Festival of Britain anniversary in 2011.

Right hand end with Brighton-Aquatints-style rooftops, chair included for scale

As the archetypal Romantic Modern, Piper has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity in recent years. But although good paintings from the first half of his career are hard to come by and expensive, no institution has yet come forward to buy 'An Englishman's Home'. This seems rather odd to me. Given the quality of the mural, its historical significance, its beauty and the standing of the artist who made it, I'd have imagined that art museums would be desperate to get their hands on those 42 panels.

Why has nobody come running, chequebook in hand? And how, if no major institution gets behind modern British murals, are the rest of us to be persuaded that it's worth preserving those pictures that still adorn the walls of schools, hospitals, restaurants and village halls around the country?

FFI: Fine Art Society
Twentieth Century Society

Sutherland, Ravilious, Piper: Why I Love 'Works on Paper'

Graham Sutherland, Setting Sun

If you haven't made it to Modern Art Oxford to see the exhibition of work by Graham Sutherland it still isn't too late, not quite at any rate: the show closes tomorrow. I finally got there yesterday, spurred on by the imminent deadline, and was immediately struck by a similarity between this exhibition and the Ravilious show that opened last week at the RWA Bristol. No, I don't mean that the pictures were all works on paper. I'm talking about the frames.

When I sold paintings I used to spend a lot of time helping people choose frames or come to terms with frames they didn't much like but couldn't afford to replace. The choice of frame says a great deal about the collector (ostentatious, tasteful, lacking a sense of proportion, etc) and the condition of the frames on show in an exhibition say a lot about the paintings and the artist on display.

Sutherland show: note mismatched frames (pic: Marcus Leith)

With these eighty-plus Sutherland pictures, many of them studies and sketches, you get a veritable survey of 20th century British framing. There are frames with grubby old mounts and others with no mount at all; you find a hefty frame in dark wood with a neighbour that is light and delicate. Frames are rarely photographed, but they can change your perception of a picture; in one instance the serrated edge of a frame cast across the painting a shadow like battlements on a castle wall.

This splendid variety of frames is also found in the Ravilious show, which reflects the history of the paintings themselves. These are pictures (the frames tell me) that have hung in the homes of collectors or family members for years. They have been loved for themselves, as magical objects belonging to a lost past, rather than as treasures to show off. One can imagine glancing at the battered frame and thinking, hmmm, better get that seen to... And then doing nothing about it.

Ravilious paintings on arrival at RWA (pic: Lottie Storey - I think!)

Perhaps the state of the frames also says something about the new-found popularity of these neglected painters. The will now exists to put on exhibitions, but does any institution have the cash to go round reframing these old pictures? These are, lest we forget, works on paper, which for some reason I have never understood makes them less precious than works on canvas. No, I can see why a canvas would be worth more money-wise, since the medium is longer-lasting. But in artistic terms?

Some of Sutherland's Pembrokeshire pictures are gorgeous. I would have been quite happy to save his work as a war artist for another day and linger in front of those fat, melting suns and swooping lanes. They show a sensitive soul inspired to delirious levels by his surroundings. I'm going to St Davids in the summer and look forward to studying the paintings through the landscape and vice versa...

Graham Sutherland, The Wanderer, 1940 (V&A)

But while I was in Oxford I had one more treat, a visit to the Western Print Room at the Ashmolean. Actually two more, because I popped into the Blackwell Art Bookshop on the way and saw 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' prominently on display.

I love the Ashmolean because it seems to have just the right amount of stuff in just the right amount of space, and the print room is old-fashioned in all the right ways. There are little wooden signs on the tables advising that fountain pens may not be used, and the staff are wonderful, treating top scholars and ordinary members of the public with the same courtesy and attentiveness.

And this is the kingdom of works on paper: boxes and boxes of prints, drawings and watercolours, all carefully mounted, catalogued and stored away from the light. I pulled out a Cotman watercolour of the interior of Norwich Cathedral and a red in it just leapt off the paper. But it was Piper I had come to see, for the sake of comparison with the Sutherland show. The Lewin bequest of assorted sketches, prints and paintings is a mixed bag, with a couple of the artist's sparkling 1939 Brighton Aquatints alongside some pretty rough pencil sketches of Windsor Castle.

My favourite picture is a study for Piper's famous painting of Coventry Cathedral, the morning after it was bombed. The finished painting is famous for good reason, but the study, though only a few inches across and little more than a scribble of black ink coloured roughly with yellow and blue, shows us his first reaction. Like the Sutherland studies, where you can sometimes see the marks of raindrops on the paper, this picture shows the artist's spontaneous response to a scene of great drama. It's a gem.

Graham Sutherland: An Unfinished World ends tomorrow
Eric Ravilious: Going Modern / Being British runs until April 29
There's a show of work by John Piper at Blenheim Palace
And don't forget Long Live Great Bardfield, coming soon to the Fry, Saffron Walden

John Piper, David Jones & The Queen: Art in Cardiff

John Piper, Llanthony Priory, 1941 (private collection)

By the time I'd worked my way through both rooms of the The Queen: Art and Image at the National Museum of Wales, one thing was clear: this is a monarch who likes having her picture taken. There are photos of her smiling, photos of her tight-lipped, magisterial pictures in which she looms over the viewer. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the monarchy, but one or two of the photos oozed power. Never mind all that democratic nonsense, I found myself thinking, she's the boss. By contrast, Lucian Freud's tiny painting makes her look like a camp little man of a certain age. I guess he was trying to tell us something too.

But I wasn't in Cardiff to look at Royal portraits. In fact I didn't know the exhibition was on until I walked into the room and saw the same face repeated over and over, reimagined by Warhol, Gilbert and George and sundry others but still essentially the same unknowable woman. If there is a real, hidden Elizabeth beneath the public persona, this exhibition leaves her in peace.

Pietro Annigoni, Queen Elizabeth II, 1969 (Nat Port Gall)

I'd been meaning to visit the Welsh equivalent of the National Gallery for a while, to see a temporary exhibition of work by David Jones, and when I read that a Piper exhibition had just started as well I rushed down to Temple Meads and took a train Across the Border. It's been a while since I visited Cardiff, and I was struck on arrival by how different it is: flat, expansive and conceived on a grand scale. The place has the air of a provincial French city, a character best expressed in the flamboyant old stone palaces that house the City Hall and National Museum, and in the neighbouring parks and boulevards.

Once inside the museum I headed straight for the Piper show, a public display of a private collection comprised mostly of dramatic mountain scenes. I hadn't realised before quite how much time that quintessential wandering artist spent in Wales, but it seems he practically lived in Snowdonia in the 1940s and 1950s. Personally, I don't think that the mountain paintings, which are dramatic but rather formless, show him at his best, but there was one gorgeous treat: a painting of Llanthony Priory from the 1940s. Nobody has ever captured the peculiar atmosphere surrounding an English or Welsh church quite like Piper, and here the dramatic contrast of darkness and light (the wall on the right is a dazzling golden yellow) is enhanced by a wonderful texture; the paint surface is covered in swirls and squiggles that almost form a pattern but instead reinforce the sense of age and beauty.

Thank heavens he gave up abstraction.

David Jones, Capel-y-ffin, 1926/7 (NM Wales)

I got distracted by the Queen after that, but presently located the corridor where a dozen or so paintings by David Jones hang in light so carefully controlled that you peer at the pictures as if through a Welsh mist. Which I suppose is authentic. Jones is less well-known than Ravilious, Bawden and other watercolourists of the age, partly because his subject matter and style are eccentric, to say the least, and partly because he chose to work so lightly that he makes Rav, by contrast, seem as bold as Matisse.

A Londoner of mixed Anglo-Welsh parentage, Jones served in the Great War and subsequently suffered two nervous breakdowns that hampered his career just as he was becoming established. This was in the early 1930s, after a productive decade which he had spent working alongside Eric Gill, first at Ditchling, Sussex, and then at Capel-y-Ffin in the Welsh Marches. In later years Jones produced increasingly odd pictures, often in pencil and crayon, covering the paper with mythical figures, plants and flowers and symbols of one kind and another. These are fascinating but less accessible than his landscapes from the 1920s which, though sometimes agonisingly delicate, are beautifully crafted and highly original.

Gwen John, Girl in a Green Dress (NM Wales)

I was hoping to see some of his work from Capel-y-Ffin, and was rewarded with one lovely picture. The man was evidently brilliant (TS Eliot described his epic 1937 war poem 'In Parenthesis' as a work of genius) but with little interest in artistic fame. I want to see more!

Another artist of that productive era of whom the same could be said is Gwen John (who was born in Pembrokeshire), and it was a pleasant surprise to happen upon a clutch of her portraits hanging next to a group of her brother's. Where Augustus John's pictures are bright and expressive - crying out to be noticed, you might say - Gwen's are self-effacing and thoughtful. In a couple of the portraits the subjects seem about to fade into the background, but they are beautiful nevertheless.

James Dickson Innes, Arenig, 1913 (NM Wales)

The art galleries of the National Museum are full of treats like this. I'd been wanting for a long time to see some paintings by James Dickson Innes, a bohemian friend of Augustus John who died of TB in his twenties, and here were half a dozen or more, scattered through the collection. I could see right away why people used to rave (maybe they still do) about the jewel-like colours in his landscapes, which are mostly small but striking.

One final surprise awaited me in the room devoted to Welsh landscape: a picture I've been thinking about a lot over the past year. 'Waterwheel' is one of my favourite Ravilious paintings, and one that features in 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', and it was fascinating to come across it like that, unexpectedly and in a room full of landscapes by other artists of different generations. What struck me instantly was the quality of the light, both the luminous sky and the radiance surrounding the waterwheel like a halo. In that brightness I felt the motion of the waterwheel and heard the gurgling water - a place (Capel-y-Ffin) and a moment (dawn, early March 1938) brought to life.

Eric Ravilious, Waterwheel, 1938 (Brecknock Museum)

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' is being bound, and will be available very soon! Come and say hello at the RWA, Bristol on Saturday March 10th, when I'll be signing copies...

Dungeness

Miniature railway, lighthouses, shingle - Dungeness!

In the autumn I enjoyed a whistlestop tour around Rye and environs, a part of the world I knew well from the work of artists I love but hadn't visited in years. The place I had heard most about was undoubtedly Dungeness, that great parson's nose of shingle jutting out from the flat Kent coast a few miles south of the hilltop town.

Actually I read about it first, in Derek Jarman's wonderful, elegiac book 'Modern Nature'. This must have been twenty years ago, but both the tone of the book and the descriptions of the film-maker's strange, stony garden stayed with me. A dying man attempting to tease life out of salt-encrusted shingle, in the shadow of a nuclear power station? I didn't like his films, particularly, but this was a wonderful tale.

Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman's former home (private - please respect)

Other stories about Dungeness reached me over the subsequent years. I remember the sound of feet scrunching over shingle in a Radio 4 documentary, a programme which left with me an image of stones lying in great undulating waves, so that when you stood in the midst of them you could see nothing else.

Then I came across the painting by Eric Ravilious that features in 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', which gives a completely different impression. His version is more like a scene from an old-fashioned Sci-fi movie, with improbable modern structures dotted around a desolate shore. Dungeness had been popular with artists since at least the mid-19th century, when dramatic scenes of ships in peril were so much in vogue. More recently, that intrepid travelling artist John Piper had made several lovely pictures of the lighthouse and attendant buildings, using his favoured media of pen and ink, gouache and collage. Ravilious may have seen these, which would partially explain his idiosyncratic choice of subject and angle.

Eric Ravilious, Dungeness, 1939, private collection/DACS

Anyway, one bright morning in September I set off from Rye. As I drove south the weather changed, the clouds not so much moving in as forming around me, and by the time I reached the deserted holiday camps and hotels of Camber Sands it was drizzling. The country beyond reminded me of Lincolnshire or the Baltic coast, but that was probably just the weather. To the right the land was fenced off, miles of it, and looking at the map afterwards I realised it was an army range. I drove through Lydd, read a report in a local paper that trumpeted the expansion of the local airport as the only hope for the local economy and lambasted the bird lovers of Dungeness for their opposition to the plans, and carried on.

Approaching my destination on a narrow lane it was clear that this was one of the world's stranger and more wonderful places. To the right the industrial bulk of not one, but two nuclear power stations. To the left, an evenly-spaced row of houses, each slightly different to its neighbour, which stretched away along the coast towards Dymchurch, as far as I could see. And all around, the most extraordinary landscape - a kind of miniature Lake District with hills ten feet high and no plant taller than a gorse bush.

As I got closer to the coast the vegetation grew sparser, the shingle more obvious, until I was driving along an even more makeshift road with the odd wooden chalet on one side and on the other a wave of stones that formed a crest above the shoreline. On this crest, outlined against the grey sky, brightly painted boats were perched ready for launching, while closer at hand lay the skeletons of older, abandoned boats with bleached and broken timbers. Among these were other relics - huts and bits of winding machinery, and long, snaking sections of narrow gauge railway track. Up ahead were the lighthouses and on my right, as I went slowly along, Prospect Cottage with its matt black walls and bright yellow trim, and the bizarre ornamental garden created by Derek Jarman in the last years of his life.

The Low Light, built C19, converted to foghorn station C20

Few places I've visited have such a powerful and unique identity as Dungeness and I could see instantly why Ravilious had felt at home. The lighthouses and miniature railway and power stations and eccentric little houses were part of it, but what appealed to me most was the evidence of passing time.

While the cliffs of Beachy Head, just along the coast, are constantly being worn away, the shingle bank is continually growing, and as the sea retreats so the fishermen and other inhabitants of this peculiar settlement follow it, leaving behind on the stones whatever they no longer need. Everywhere was evidence of past endeavours, although I found no trace of the lighthouse on which Ravilious focused his attention, the so-called Low Light installed in the 19th century to supplement the main lighthouse.

Prospect Cottage

What a place to create a garden in the face of death. What a place for a painter of everyday marvels. I can't wait to go back.

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' is published by The Mainstone Press at the end of February.

Ravilious, Nash, Piper: Newhaven, Eastbourne, Rye

Eric Ravilious, Newhaven Harbour, 1936

Last Sunday I managed to see the John Piper show at Towner, just a couple of hours before it closed. An interesting experience: as anticipated there was some fabulous work from the 1930s, especially those collaged visions of Newhaven and other places on the south coast. Some of the later work was less fun, but all in all a lovely exhibition that confirmed my view that you often have to travel out of London to see the best work by British artists. Can we have Paul Nash in Kent and Sussex next?

I was in the happy position of having a couple of days to charge around the region, taking pictures for forthcoming talks about Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. It's possible to get a bit obsessed about finding the settings for particular paintings, but it is interesting to see how an artist redesigns reality for a particular composition. Perhaps more important, though, is seeing what it is about a place that attracts artists - feeling the atmosphere and getting a sense of the light.

Closed for the duration... West Pier, Newhaven

Take Newhaven, a port that might seem rather humdrum in comparison to Lewes and Eastbourne. Ravilious,  Edward Bawden and Piper all loved the place, but why? I went there first, having left Bristol early in the morning, and parked on the West Quay. I set off walking towards the sea, past wooden piers piled with fishing stuff, through a new marina development and on, and on - I'd mistakenly parked miles from the sea. Here was Newhaven Fort on the right, finally, and some boats perched in a yard, and then the sea came into view, between a lowly breakwater to the east and the magnificent curving arm of the West Pier or, as Tirzah Ravilious called it, 'the mole'.

Giorgio de Chirico, Ariadne, 1913

The sense of space was breathtaking and the light pearly - I could imagine that at dawn, with the sun rising over the sea and the cliffs of Beachy Head, Rav for one would have been in his element. The breakwater with its arches borrowed from a de Chirico painting has evidently been closed for some time, so one can't walk to the lighthouse at the end as Ravilious did in a storm in September 1935 (the night an old man was swept off the same pier to his death).

However the Hope Inn, where he and Bawden stayed several times, is going strong. I was wondering when it was transformed from traditional old pub into its groovy modern form, and a letter from EB to ER seems to pinpoint the date to 1936/7. With his usual waspish humour Bawden points out that the improvements are both to the layout of the pub, with a balcony now running in front of the bedrooms, and to the food: ‘Meals and service have brightened; gone are those soft, stale oyster-eyed eggs and there is is less water and more gravy with the meat’.

Eric Ravilious, Beachy Head, 1939

From Newhaven, I drove through Seaford and on towards Beachy Head, only belatedly realising that the road crossed the top of Cuckmere Haven - a glimpse of water in fat sunlit coils almost sent me into the hedge then it was gone, as sights always vanish when you're in a car, and it was on to the next place. I'd been wanting to visit Belle Tout Lighthouse since I'd found out about it being a hotel, and overcame what I think is a perfectly sensible horror of cliffs to have a look at the place.

Beachy Head... not for the faint-hearted

It reminded me that, years ago, I visited Beachy Head with a friend who stood with his feet STICKING OUT over the edge of the cliff, while I cowered on all fours. There's something particularly daunting about those chalk cliffs, but what is it? The curving green hills that are cut off so abruptly? The stark white of the chalk? The sheer drop? Those white cliffs are scarier than the black granite of Pembrokeshire.

Belle Tout... the moving lighthouse, now a hotel

On then to Eastbourne and the Piper show, before heading for Rye. Quite what was going to happen in Rye I wasn't sure, but the idea was to camp... somewhere. And see the landscape and coast that inspired all three of these artists along with countless others...

To be continued

John Piper, Newhaven and the Towner Appeal

The Towner Gallery in Eastbourne has appealed for help in buying two interesting pieces by John Piper, both showing the harbour at Newhaven. Both pictures are currently on show at the gallery, as part of its summer blockbuster, 'John Piper in Kent and Sussex', and they're among the best on display.

Piper is an intriguing figure, not least because his work is so varied and, it has to be said, uneven. Looking through 'Piper's Places',  the book he put together with Richard Ingrams towards the end of his (Piper's) life, I was struck by this. You'd go from a beautifully detailed, atmospheric drawing of a country church to a scribbled sketch of some piece of coastline that had evidently caught his fancy at a particular moment, in a particular light perhaps, or with clouds looming.

Eric Ravilious, Newhaven Harbour (litho), 1937

Of course he went everywhere (in England and Wales, at least), setting the trend for his generation by leaping in his car, at a time when owning one was still a luxury, and buzzing about the countryside, photographing and sketching everything that caught his interest - churches and ancient monuments, elegant streets, hills, ruins, harbours...

Edward Bawden, Newhaven, 1935

I think his work reflects this restless, sometimes hectic, motion. At its best it can capture the spirit of a place perfectly, and bring something new to the artistic process too, and this is especially true of the collages he made in the 1930s. His collage of the Castle pub and the harbour is in striking contrast to the paintings Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden made at the port around the same time.

The Towner has secured £75,000 from The Art Fund and other sources towards the purchase price of Piper's 'The Castle' and 'Newhaven' - a wonderfully energetic pen and ink drawing, but still needs another £10,000 to complete the sale. Perhaps some generous sponsor has already stepped forward, or perhaps the money will come from thousands of people, each giving a little. They're well worth the investment, I'd say. Thank heavens Piper had the sense not to become a solicitor...

Later: the extra money was found and Towner now owns both pictures - once again the Art Fund has helped a museum buy work which is both popular and important. 

James Fox, 'British Masters' & 'Paul Nash in Pictures'

Stanley Spencer, The Resurrection, Cookham, 1926

After an eye-opening first instalment, art lovers around Britain were keen to see what James Fox would get up to in the second episode of 'British Masters', and he didn't disappointment. Lingering shots of a nude Stanley Spencer (did somebody say 'flaccid'?) were followed by a piece proclaiming the virtues of obnoxious Royal Academy president Sir Alfred Munnings. A deeply unfashionable artist, we were told, and it wasn't hard to see why; it was much more difficult to see why Dr Fox had picked him out for special praise.

Until, that is, we reached the finale of that piece, in which an inebriated Munnings launched a public tirade against modern art in general and Picasso in particular. Not for the only time in the programme, the excellent archive footage and recordings had more allure than the art. 'In Search of England' was the title of a book by bestselling interwar travel writer HV Morton (whose 'In Search of London' is still in print and one of the best books EVER on the city), and in the programme Dr Fox used the documentary-travelogue form to great effect.

Nash and Spencer aside, he mostly avoided the famous names of the period and instead chose artists whose work reflected the concerns and conflicts of the age: Munnings and the 'ordinary' William Coldstream stood on two sides of a divide represented in literature by Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell. If this made interesting viewing it didn't necessarily show British art at its best, and Dr Fox will no doubt be lambasted as a reactionary himself - have we had a female artist yet? I don't think so...  However, the day was saved by the in-depth study of Spencer and a fascinating final section on John Piper, whose exquisite painting of Coventry Cathedral, still smouldering after the previous night's bombing, has a genuine, understated greatness.

The film of Piper discussing Gainsborough and Picasso was a curiosity - what a strange old bird he was - and the sequence on the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition was fun too. I loved the old footage of people travelling by bus to Avebury, although I don't remember reading anywhere that Nash discovered the ancient stones by chance, after suffering an asthma attack on a bus. Is this really what happened?

John Piper, Interior of Coventry Cathedral, 15 November 1940

It would be good to know as I've been delving into Nash's life and work this year in preparation for a new book, 'Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream', which will be published by the Mainstone Press in the autumn. As with the 'Ravilious in Pictures' series, the new book focuses on a selection of twenty-two paintings, each accompanied by a concise essay; we've decided to dedicate the first volume to Nash's oil paintings, which he used to express the ideas that pre-occupied him most. A second volume will focus on his gorgeous watercolours, which were admired greatly during his lifetime but which are now rarely seen in public.

Paul Nash, The Wanderer, 1911

The more I learn about Nash the more fascinating a figure he becomes. Born in 1889 he had the kind of Victorian childhood where Mother was seen for an hour in the evening. He read Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and from them gained a lifelong love of nonsense and wordplay, and though occasionally ill was robust enough to star in his school soccer team. Any sensible career path was cut off for him by his hopeless maths, yet critics later described his paintings as 'mathematical'. He seems to have been motivated by an intense inner vision, but took centre stage in the public debates of the time.

His struggle to reconcile modernity and Britishness was rather like Piper's. Nash tried abstraction, but quickly returned to the painting of natural forms - stones, leaves and trees. Although he greatly admired (and in some cases knew personally) Picasso, Max Ernst, de Chirico, Magritte and other modern artists, he continued to find inspiration in nature and constantly sought subjects in the British landscape that reflected his inner preoccupations; his discovery of Avebury in the summer of 1933 was part of this quest. His frequent journeys to France, including a hilarious jaunt around the Riviera with a young Edward Burra, were also part of the process.

Paul Nash, Equivalents for the Megaliths, 1935

So, another contentious and gripping programme from James Fox comes to an end, and we must wait a whole week for the next. What on earth will he say, I wonder, about post-war painting?