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Paul Nash show reveals artist's 'missing' landscapes
Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent9 Feb 2010
A curator has spent five years tracking down missing works by the artist Paul Nash for the first major exhibition of his paintings in London for 35 years.
The exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, reveals Nash to be a more mysterious artist than the British landscape painter of common renown. David Fraser Jenkins, the curator, said visitors to the show would find the work “very peculiar and visually gripping”.
The re-discovered pieces “reinforce the strength of his best work”, he said. “People are inclined to think of him as a British landscape painter, but I think he's more Symbolist than that.”
The artist, who lived from 1889 to 1946, sold almost entirely to private individuals during his lifetime with the exception of his official work as a war artist which went to the Imperial War Museum. Exhibitions in recent decades have focused on the paintings now in public ownership.
But Mr Jenkins launched his hunt because Nash's own photographic records reveal dozens of paintings whose whereabouts are unknown today.
“It is surprising how much of an artist's work can be missing — not missing to the people who own it but to public knowledge,” he said. Mr Jenkins photocopied sheets of around 25 pieces he wanted to consider for the show and distributed them to everyone he could think of in the art world — from dealers and collectors to auctioneers.
As a consequence, he was able to trace around a dozen, most of which have not been seen since the Twenties and Thirties. “Some of them were with children or grandchildren of people who were friends of his at the time.”
The exhibition includes nearly 60 paintings in total and 15 photographs.
Nash was born in London and after failing his exams for a career in the Navy embarked on art, studying at the Slade with Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer and Dora Carrington. He became a pioneer of Modernism, a radical movement that attracted a young Henry Moore whose work will go on show at Tate Britain later this month.
