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Watercolour over pencil
45.5 by 29 cm

This important work relates to the oil Through a Window, Riviera (1926, see Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, no.549, illustrated pl.160, p.132). Nash's interest in the abstract qualities of objects in a room and in the reflection of glass, so evident in the present watercolour, was also to characterise many of his greatest works of the following decade.

Price on request

Inscribed with colour notes and with title (verso)

Watercolour over pencil, 7 by 9 ¾ ins (18 by 25 cm)

Provenance: with Arthur Tooth & Sons Ltd, May 1946,

bought by Roy Rich

Literature: A.Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, p.474, no.1266

 

Referring to late Nash watercolours like the present work, Causey (op cit) writes:  "...these late watercolours are governed less by the special features of a place... Individual features of nature tend to be dissolved. Single and even grouped, trees are not common. Foregrounds...are often abandoned, drawing less essential than cumulative colour washes." (Causey, p.324)

 

Nash's wife Margaret had given him a book on Chinese painting in 1944 and there is also evidence to suggest that this type of art had a strong influence on the style of some of his work in the mid 1940s.