John Northcote Nash: The Art of Seeing
"The artist's main business is to train his eye to see."
The artist's main business is to train his eye to see, then to probe and then to train his hand to work in sympathy with his eye. I have a habit of looking, and really seeing.1
Thank you for visiting! If you enjoyed this collection, please like and/or share it. And, as always, I would love to know your thoughts in the comments. You can also visit the Anthology Archive for the complete biography, gallery, and library collection so far. Until next time…
Images:
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1
Cited in Dr Ronald Blythe, The Time by the Sea: Aldeburgh 1955-1958 (Faber & Faber, 2013) Ch. 5.
Thanks for this lovely gallery of paintings by John Nash, Victoria. A number were old favourites and some were totally new, which is always thrilling. I was always a Paul Nash fan but having become more familiar with John's work, I think I now love it more than Paul's. The exhibition of John's work at Compton Verney in 2021 ('The landscape of love and solace') was marvellous.
One of my heroes, the writer Ronald Blythe who inherited from John and Christine Nash their farmhouse Bottengoms in Wormingford (on the Essex-Suffolk border) after their deaths. He lived and wrote there until his 95th year. One thing I remember Ronnie writing in one of his books was that he inherited from John both his own collection of paints and that of his brother Paul, who died much earlier, and that when he checked there wasn't a single tube of paint common to both collections.
These are really moving - especially the snowy trenches. And then the pastoral colors and abstracted shapes are delightful! Thanks for this beauty, Victoria ☺️💜