Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  W.H. Nash
  Margaret Nash
  Lord Eccles
  Thence by family descent
  
  EXHIBITED:
  London, Dorien Leigh Gallery, Drawings by Paul Nash, 1913, no.25
  Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Camden Town Group and Others, 1913, no.101
  London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Twentieth-Century Art: a Review of the Modern Movements, 1914, no.187
  London, The Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of works by Artists of Fame and Promise II, September-October 1956, no.2
  London, The Redfern Gallery, Paul Nash, 1961, no.1
  
  LITERATURE:
  C.C. Abbott and Anthony Bertram (ed.), Poet and Painter. Being the Correspondence between Gordon Bottomley and Paul Nash 1910-1946, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1955, p.60
  Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.351, no.58 (ill.b&w)
  
  Writing in his autobiography, Outline, in 1911 Nash explains his decision to 'go in for nature' and therefore leave London for his parental home, Wood Lane House at Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire. The property had been specially built for the family in 1901 and included a plot of about an acre and a half, bordered by great elm trees and carefully planted with maturing shrubbery. The morning room, which Nash used as a studio, looked over what he called the 'bird garden' and gave ample opportunity for the artist to indulge his talents. As Roger Cardinal states, it was the bird garden 'where it all began' and with reference to which Nash wrote 'its magic lay within itself, implicated in its own design and its relationship to its surroundings' (R. Cardinal, The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash, London, 1989, p.63). Nash's intricate knowledge of the garden and surrounding area would lead to his seminal work, The Three (1912), which was sold in these rooms for £86,000 on 8 March 2005.
  
  In Andrew's Fields, No.1 was executed in 1913 and bears several of the trademark landscape qualities that Nash expressed during this highly informative period. Trees in particular had always held a spiritual quality for the artist who was drawn to them as a child on visits to Kensington Gardens. In referencing the trees that formed part of the boundary at Wood Lane House, Nash noted that there were 'elms but of such an eccentric growth that they looked like some new species' (Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.26). In the present work we see the composition focused on such an elm, which stands tall surveying the landscape as a dominating and privileged witness of life. The shape of the tree itself is accentuated by the arc of birds flying above, themselves an emblem of freedom for the artist. The shadows that are cast across the ground towards the centre of the composition add an element of mystery to the scene and affirm the artist's interest in contrast of light. It is also at this point that Nash began to incorporate further colour to his work, as well displayed in the strong greens and blue of In Andrews Fields, No.1.
  
  The present work confidently expresses Nash's intimate grasp of nature and reveals his ability as a unique artist. The serenity of the scene and that of the few others from this period is juxtaposed with his imminent enlisting as part of the war effort and subsequent deployment to the front.

Auction Notices

• Please note this work is further signed, inscribed and dated 'Andrews Field Study I 1913./by (Iver Heath. Bucks.)/Paul Nash.' (verso)

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Category: Fine Art / Modern British and Irish Art

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