0:00:05 > 0:00:09In the summer of 1912, a 22-year-old Paul Nash felt inspired
0:00:09 > 0:00:12to draw these towering hills in Oxfordshire.
0:00:14 > 0:00:19Alone, Nash would walk the hills, called the Wittenham Clumps.
0:00:19 > 0:00:22For him, they were the birthplace of his art,
0:00:22 > 0:00:26a place of magic and inspiration.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29Nash called them the pyramids of his small world.
0:00:30 > 0:00:34Nash was just setting out on his restless journey as an artist.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37Brilliantly original, yet also enigmatic.
0:00:39 > 0:00:42He would come back here right at the end of his life
0:00:42 > 0:00:46to immerse himself in his own English paradise,
0:00:46 > 0:00:48and say his goodbyes to the world
0:00:48 > 0:00:51with some of the most lyrical paintings of the 20th century.
0:00:53 > 0:00:55But it wasn't Nash's destiny
0:00:55 > 0:00:58to be a painter only of pastoral landscapes.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08World War I transformed the landscape of Belgium and France,
0:01:08 > 0:01:11and scarred Nash's soul forever.
0:01:13 > 0:01:15He painted its muddy bloody abyss.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21He brooded on its dead, and never forgot them.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24Nash was a brilliant artist of a very English kind.
0:01:24 > 0:01:28Strong feelings are expressed, but with a certain reserve.
0:01:30 > 0:01:32After the living nightmare of war,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35he would paint life in peacetime as a waking dream,
0:01:35 > 0:01:38thronged with disconcerting images.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44He would rarely paint the people he knew, and never paint himself.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47Only ghosts inhabit his world.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50The paths they walked, the damage they brought.
0:01:50 > 0:01:52The trails they've left.
0:01:54 > 0:01:58I want to follow his trail, walk in his footsteps,
0:01:58 > 0:02:01and find out, if I can, what inspired Paul Nash,
0:02:01 > 0:02:03and what haunted him.
0:02:32 > 0:02:37Paul Nash's love of nature began during his childhood.
0:02:37 > 0:02:40When he was 11, his family came here,
0:02:40 > 0:02:42to Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47They'd moved from London to help Nash's mother,
0:02:47 > 0:02:49who suffered from mental illness.
0:02:49 > 0:02:53Nash wrote in later life about how his mother's sickness
0:02:53 > 0:02:55cast a shadow over his childhood.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00But, from the bottom of the garden, he and his brother and sister
0:03:00 > 0:03:03would escape to play in the woods beyond.
0:03:05 > 0:03:09These woods near the family home at Iver Heath were his playground.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12He used to come here with his younger brother John,
0:03:12 > 0:03:14and his much younger sister Barbara.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17Paul often used to carry Barbara on his shoulders.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20Between them, they turned this place into a kind of
0:03:20 > 0:03:23Swallows and Amazons paradise.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25Paul gave these woods a nickname.
0:03:25 > 0:03:29He called them Hawk's Wood after the birds of prey that hover
0:03:29 > 0:03:32overhead, and I think it's a revealing choice of name
0:03:32 > 0:03:35because, after all, he was himself something of a hawk.
0:03:35 > 0:03:39Rather aloof, rather solitary, someone who lived through his eyes.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42And I wonder if it wasn't here during his childhood
0:03:42 > 0:03:47that he acquired his lifelong habit of relating more easily to nature,
0:03:47 > 0:03:51to the landscape, to trees, to birds, than to people.
0:03:51 > 0:03:56I think here, more than anywhere else, he truly felt able to breathe.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03On leaving school, instead of joining the Navy,
0:04:03 > 0:04:06as his mother wanted, Nash got a job
0:04:06 > 0:04:10with a firm of book illustrators and went to art classes by night.
0:04:12 > 0:04:17Angel and Devil, a drawing of 1910, has a nightmare feel about it.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21It's like a moonlit vision of Hawk's Wood, where he played as a boy,
0:04:21 > 0:04:26but here, the hawk is a winged devil attempting to snare its victim.
0:04:28 > 0:04:31Later that year, Nash's mother died.
0:04:31 > 0:04:33He was 21 years old.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44Nash continued to visit his widowed father at the family home.
0:04:44 > 0:04:46The two shared a close relationship,
0:04:46 > 0:04:50even closer now with the loss of Nash's mother.
0:04:52 > 0:04:54In the sunny warmth of the morning room,
0:04:54 > 0:04:57Nash developed his work as a burgeoning artist
0:04:57 > 0:05:00by sketching the natural world outside.
0:05:04 > 0:05:09It's fascinating to me to see this beautiful early drawing,
0:05:09 > 0:05:11simply called Tree,
0:05:11 > 0:05:15in the very house where, I'm sure, he created it.
0:05:15 > 0:05:20The view is as if from that window.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24Those elm trees once stood in that gap.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28They all died from Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970s,
0:05:28 > 0:05:30but here they are in Nash's work.
0:05:31 > 0:05:35It is very much, I think, an image of nature
0:05:35 > 0:05:39seen from the confines of a garden. He tells us what time of year it is.
0:05:39 > 0:05:41A little daffodil in the foreground.
0:05:41 > 0:05:46These squadrons of swallows flying in tight formation. It's spring.
0:05:46 > 0:05:50It's a picture full of a sense of air, breath.
0:05:50 > 0:05:52There's a lot of sky in it.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56The trees seem to reach up towards that sky.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59It could have been a picture of nothing at all,
0:05:59 > 0:06:01just a view from his window,
0:06:01 > 0:06:05but he's somehow managed to infuse it with a sense of idealism,
0:06:05 > 0:06:07dare I say spirituality.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11It's as if those trees aren't just growing, they're aspiring.
0:06:11 > 0:06:13They're breathing in the air.
0:06:14 > 0:06:16Where did Nash get his style from?
0:06:17 > 0:06:22This dense crosshatching, this elaborate working of detail,
0:06:22 > 0:06:25conjures up the fairy-tale mood
0:06:25 > 0:06:28of late 19th-century book illustration.
0:06:28 > 0:06:31Nash wants to create an image that is simultaneously
0:06:31 > 0:06:34a depiction of what he sees from his house,
0:06:34 > 0:06:38but he wants to give it a kind of spiritual lift.
0:06:38 > 0:06:40He wants to express to us
0:06:40 > 0:06:44the way in which he experiences nature as a kind of vision.
0:06:45 > 0:06:48There's a lot of idealism to this image.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56With the encouragement of his father, Nash moved to London
0:06:56 > 0:07:01after winning a place at the highly selective Slade School of Art.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04Nash's class, as seen here in a group photograph,
0:07:04 > 0:07:07included some of the great young artists of the day.
0:07:07 > 0:07:08Stanley Spencer,
0:07:08 > 0:07:10David Bomberg,
0:07:10 > 0:07:11CRW Nevinson.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15But Nash felt he didn't fit in.
0:07:15 > 0:07:18He didn't even turn up for the photograph.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22In later years, he recalled being deeply wounded
0:07:22 > 0:07:23by head tutor Henry Tonks,
0:07:23 > 0:07:27who criticised him for his inability to draw the human figure.
0:07:29 > 0:07:33It was then that Nash decided to make nature his art school.
0:07:35 > 0:07:38He walked the countryside alone, searching for what he called
0:07:38 > 0:07:42the "Genius Loci" - the spirit of the place.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48Instead of a life class, with its carefully posed nudes,
0:07:48 > 0:07:51he studied the Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56Instead of artist's models, he depicted trees.
0:07:57 > 0:08:01Human figures, when they do appear in his work, seem like ghosts.
0:08:03 > 0:08:07Nash was a self-made artist and he was his own impresario too,
0:08:07 > 0:08:12organising his first exhibition at a London gallery in 1912.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Landscapes, of course, in watercolour and pen and ink.
0:08:16 > 0:08:17A great success.
0:08:25 > 0:08:27But Nash didn't avoid the life class altogether.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31He had friends who were painters and, one day in 1913,
0:08:31 > 0:08:35while visiting their studios as they were sketching the female models,
0:08:35 > 0:08:39his eye was caught by a young lady called Margaret Odeh.
0:08:40 > 0:08:44Margaret was a worker for women's rights, an Oxford graduate,
0:08:44 > 0:08:47and the daughter of an Egyptian cleric.
0:08:47 > 0:08:50Nash found Margaret and her beautiful brown eyes
0:08:50 > 0:08:52singularly lovely and elusive.
0:08:52 > 0:08:57Margaret found the good-looking and charming Nash hard to resist.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00The following year, the couple married.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04Life was going very well for Paul Nash.
0:09:04 > 0:09:06Then, his world began to fall apart.
0:09:13 > 0:09:141914.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18The outbreak of the First World War.
0:09:20 > 0:09:21Nash signed up.
0:09:23 > 0:09:27First, he served in the Artists Rifles, the traditional regiment
0:09:27 > 0:09:29of choice for painters and sculptors.
0:09:30 > 0:09:34But the duties involved home service only.
0:09:34 > 0:09:39Tired of endless training exercises, Nash was determined to see action.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43So he transferred to the Hampshire Regiment.
0:09:45 > 0:09:49In May 1917, he was sent to Ypres, to the front,
0:09:49 > 0:09:53where he encountered a world unlike any he had known.
0:10:15 > 0:10:19As a sensitive, rather bookworm-ish boy, Paul Nash had developed
0:10:19 > 0:10:24a great taste for the absurd classics of English literature.
0:10:24 > 0:10:26Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland,
0:10:26 > 0:10:28Edward Lear's nonsense poetry,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31and I think when he came to the front,
0:10:31 > 0:10:35to him it was as if he'd suddenly stepped into one of those
0:10:35 > 0:10:37absurdist worlds of the imagination,
0:10:37 > 0:10:41except here, it was all actually happening.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45Imagine a world where men had to live in holes burrowed underground,
0:10:45 > 0:10:50where they had to spend most of their days not in cities,
0:10:50 > 0:10:55not in houses, but in these strange metal scars cut into the landscape.
0:10:55 > 0:10:58How very strange.
0:10:58 > 0:10:59How sinister.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10Nash had armed himself with pen and paper, as well as his rifle.
0:11:10 > 0:11:14As the war went on, he'd become increasingly fascinated
0:11:14 > 0:11:16by this half-buried world,
0:11:16 > 0:11:22peopled by anxious young soldiers, smoking, waiting to go over the top.
0:11:24 > 0:11:27There's a sense of anticipation in many of his war sketches
0:11:27 > 0:11:29from 1917-18.
0:11:30 > 0:11:33Of something terrible about to happen.
0:11:33 > 0:11:35It was.
0:11:35 > 0:11:37But Nash wouldn't be there to see it,
0:11:37 > 0:11:40at least not during his first spell at the front.
0:11:42 > 0:11:46On 25th May 1917, so focused on his drawing
0:11:46 > 0:11:48that he didn't watch his footing,
0:11:48 > 0:11:52Nash tripped into a trench, breaking his ribs.
0:11:54 > 0:11:56A comical self-inflicted injury
0:11:56 > 0:11:59which meant that he escaped the tragedy
0:11:59 > 0:12:01about to befall his regiment.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06Nash was stretchered back to England, and just a few days later,
0:12:06 > 0:12:10the first shots were fired in the Battle of Passchendaele.
0:12:14 > 0:12:16The most terrible battle of the war.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21Four months long, 200,000 British dead or wounded,
0:12:21 > 0:12:24Nash's regiment wiped out.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30Tellingly perhaps,
0:12:30 > 0:12:33he never spoke about his dead comrades later in life.
0:12:36 > 0:12:38Perhaps he had no words.
0:12:40 > 0:12:42But he did paint a picture
0:12:42 > 0:12:44during his convalescence in Gloucestershire.
0:12:46 > 0:12:50The Cherry Orchard. July 1917.
0:12:50 > 0:12:52But these are winter trees,
0:12:52 > 0:12:54lined up like crosses in a cemetery,
0:12:54 > 0:12:56death in life.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59Swallows swoop unnaturally low,
0:12:59 > 0:13:03or maybe they're snagged in the mesh of the barbed wire fence.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05It's ambiguous.
0:13:06 > 0:13:08Was Nash counting himself lucky?
0:13:08 > 0:13:10Or was he counting the cost?
0:13:14 > 0:13:17What we do know for sure is that he became obsessed with returning
0:13:17 > 0:13:22to the trenches, not as a soldier, but as an official war artist.
0:13:23 > 0:13:28In late 1917, after months of petitioning the Foreign Office,
0:13:28 > 0:13:31the artist finally got his commission.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36Why did Nash choose to paint, rather than fight?
0:13:36 > 0:13:39Because he was on a private mission.
0:13:39 > 0:13:42He wanted to honour the ghosts of the dead,
0:13:42 > 0:13:46to tell the truth about the horror that had done for them.
0:13:47 > 0:13:53In doing so, he was about to invent a completely new kind of war art.
0:13:56 > 0:14:00Paul Nash was a very unusual war artist
0:14:00 > 0:14:05in the sense that he didn't see war as horror, terror,
0:14:05 > 0:14:08bombs going off, bodies being shattered.
0:14:08 > 0:14:14He saw war primarily as a terribly artificial,
0:14:14 > 0:14:16awfully unnatural,
0:14:16 > 0:14:19dislocation of landscape.
0:14:19 > 0:14:23It created this network of tunnels,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26formed from corrugated iron in which men were forced to live,
0:14:26 > 0:14:29and then, when they emerged from those tunnels,
0:14:29 > 0:14:33after the battle was over, that was Nash's subject,
0:14:33 > 0:14:35the aftermath - what did they see?
0:14:35 > 0:14:38They saw a landscape cratered,
0:14:38 > 0:14:41ruined, devastated,
0:14:41 > 0:14:47full of cinder-black trees sticking up like outraged exclamation marks.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49A landscape of nightmare.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52A nightmare that had come true.
0:15:01 > 0:15:04From July 1917 to the end of the war,
0:15:04 > 0:15:07Nash would obsessively depict the landscapes of battle
0:15:07 > 0:15:09and their detritus.
0:15:10 > 0:15:15Churned up trenches, shattered artillery, broken down vehicles.
0:15:18 > 0:15:20The Menin Road,
0:15:20 > 0:15:23a scarred and pitted world,
0:15:23 > 0:15:25rubble and wire,
0:15:25 > 0:15:26dead trees,
0:15:26 > 0:15:29stagnant pools of oily water,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32furtive soldiers scurrying, nowhere to hide.
0:15:35 > 0:15:38The painter's style has suddenly changed.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40The forms are more isolated,
0:15:40 > 0:15:45the fairy-tale mood of his earlier work has been bombed out of him.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49It's oil on canvas, not pen on paper,
0:15:49 > 0:15:51and it's monumental.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54Six feet across, the scale of history painting.
0:15:55 > 0:15:57It was an official commission,
0:15:57 > 0:16:00and the Ministry of Information encouraged Nash
0:16:00 > 0:16:04to look to a famous Renaissance battle painting by Paolo Uccello.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09But comparison shows just how subversive The Menin Road is.
0:16:10 > 0:16:15Uccello shows war as heroic chivalry, men jousting.
0:16:15 > 0:16:17Nash shows us what war looks like
0:16:17 > 0:16:20when chivalry has been gassed and mortared.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25He turns Uccello's lances into fractured tree stumps,
0:16:25 > 0:16:31Uccello's noble corpses into tumbled breeze blocks and scraps of metal.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34In modern war, you can't even find the bodies.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40And, as for Uccello's pastoral battlescape,
0:16:40 > 0:16:43it's become a wasteland, a place of terror.
0:16:43 > 0:16:47Where even the sky looks torn or incinerated.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56To what extent did Nash exaggerate what he saw?
0:16:58 > 0:17:01Flanders today is nothing like the war zone he painted,
0:17:01 > 0:17:05though the battlefields beneath can still be sensed.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09Dominick Dendoven is an historian of First World War Ypres,
0:17:09 > 0:17:12who's done much research on the places Nash painted.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17Dominick, where exactly are we?
0:17:17 > 0:17:23Well, this place was then called Sanctuary Woods,
0:17:23 > 0:17:27which is actually on the former front line of the First World War.
0:17:27 > 0:17:31Did Paul Nash actually come here?
0:17:31 > 0:17:33Would he have once stood on this spot?
0:17:33 > 0:17:36This is where he was in late 1917.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39But by then, the landscape was, of course,
0:17:39 > 0:17:41completely different to what we see today.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44The relief is more or less the same,
0:17:44 > 0:17:46but you have to take away all the trees.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51What he would have seen then were just stumps of trees.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54The stumps would be the only thing reminding him
0:17:54 > 0:17:58of this being a human landscape, an earthly landscape.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02It resembled more like the moon than like Earth.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06The dominating colour would have been brown.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11Brown and black throughout the whole landscape as far as you could see.
0:18:11 > 0:18:16- We are actually entering the space of a crater.- Yes, indeed.
0:18:16 > 0:18:20This is a crater which would already have been here
0:18:20 > 0:18:24when Nash was here because this is a crater from 1915, 1916.
0:18:24 > 0:18:30But this, the relief, the contours in this landscape, are man-made.
0:18:30 > 0:18:31Made by the war.
0:18:31 > 0:18:33When my grandparents,
0:18:33 > 0:18:36my great-grandparents, came back after the war,
0:18:36 > 0:18:39and they went to the village they once lived in,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43they could not even find the place where once their house had stood,
0:18:43 > 0:18:46which means that there were not even ruins.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49There was just rubble as far as the eye could see.
0:18:50 > 0:18:53So, it's an utter wasteland.
0:18:54 > 0:18:57It was like entering a gate to another world.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07Nash depicted the war as if he were looking into the mouth of hell
0:19:07 > 0:19:08or Hades.
0:19:09 > 0:19:11But there was no River Styx here.
0:19:11 > 0:19:13Just flooded bomb craters.
0:19:13 > 0:19:17Beneath their waters, an unseen world of the dead,
0:19:17 > 0:19:19mutilated in their multitudes.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31Time has softened the craters of the Great War.
0:19:31 > 0:19:36Grass has grown up on the slopes. This one has filled up with water.
0:19:36 > 0:19:40It looks almost picturesque. It could nearly be Monet's pond.
0:19:40 > 0:19:43It wasn't like that when Paul Nash came here in 1917.
0:19:43 > 0:19:48This was a great, black, dark hole,
0:19:48 > 0:19:50a huge wound,
0:19:50 > 0:19:54exploded into the flesh of the landscape.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58These craters weren't caused by aerial bombardment.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02They were caused by the actions of the tunnellers,
0:20:02 > 0:20:06the subterranean soldiers whose job it was to dig under enemy lines
0:20:06 > 0:20:09to lay explosives and then set them off.
0:20:11 > 0:20:13What a death it must have been.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17And how horrific that death must have seemed to Paul Nash
0:20:17 > 0:20:19who, as a little boy,
0:20:19 > 0:20:21had this recurrent nightmare of being smothered.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25Well, here was a death where, at the instant of your annihilation,
0:20:25 > 0:20:27you were smothered, you were buried.
0:20:27 > 0:20:30Imagine the landscape.
0:20:30 > 0:20:35That which to Nash was always the great symbol of security,
0:20:35 > 0:20:37the unchanging aspect of the world,
0:20:37 > 0:20:40suddenly the landscape turned into a creature,
0:20:40 > 0:20:45a shape-shifting monster that might at any moment swallow you up.
0:20:45 > 0:20:49There is something very understated about his images.
0:20:49 > 0:20:53They look almost like the work of a map-maker, a topographer.
0:20:53 > 0:20:56Well, in a sense, they are topography.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01But they are the topography of an atrocious war.
0:21:09 > 0:21:12Nash has sometimes been criticised for leaving out
0:21:12 > 0:21:14the actual victims of war.
0:21:14 > 0:21:16But to appreciate his reticence,
0:21:16 > 0:21:20you have to understand what this war did to the human body.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24And, above all, to the human face.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30Nash's old tutor at the Slade, Henry Tonks, who'd trained as a surgeon,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33made drawings of some of the worst injuries.
0:21:33 > 0:21:37They're still preserved at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
0:21:39 > 0:21:41What's the origin
0:21:41 > 0:21:47of these truly extraordinary pastel drawings...
0:21:47 > 0:21:49of men with facial injuries?
0:21:49 > 0:21:52These were created by Henry Tonks
0:21:52 > 0:21:56in his practice at Aldershot, and then later at Sidcup,
0:21:56 > 0:22:01where the Queen Mary Hospital became a centre for specialist treatment
0:22:01 > 0:22:04for soldiers with facial injuries.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07You have an individual such as this man here.
0:22:07 > 0:22:12You can see quite clearly the before and after of the process,
0:22:12 > 0:22:16but in-between, there would have been maybe two or three operations,
0:22:16 > 0:22:21so it's not just going from injury to being completely repaired.
0:22:23 > 0:22:24I think they're remarkable
0:22:24 > 0:22:28because of the way in which they show us -
0:22:28 > 0:22:31we, who are so far now from the horror of that war -
0:22:31 > 0:22:34just how appalling those injuries were.
0:22:34 > 0:22:37Almost like images from nightmare.
0:22:39 > 0:22:41One thought does occur to me.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46I'm on the trail of Paul Nash and, of course,
0:22:46 > 0:22:49the one thing that I can never see,
0:22:49 > 0:22:52because he didn't paint any self-portraits,
0:22:52 > 0:22:55I can't see Paul Nash at the front.
0:22:55 > 0:22:57I can't see him, I can't picture him in my mind.
0:22:57 > 0:23:03Looking at these, I've suddenly got this very uncanny sense that...
0:23:03 > 0:23:05these are his eyes.
0:23:05 > 0:23:07These are his eyes.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11He writes with such anger and such outrage and such bewilderment,
0:23:11 > 0:23:13and suddenly, looking at these eyes, I think yes,
0:23:13 > 0:23:17these are the eyes that saw. This is what Paul Nash felt like.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20Even when they're not looking at you directly,
0:23:20 > 0:23:24you've still got that gaze coming out of the pastels at you.
0:23:28 > 0:23:30It gives me a shiver.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41You can still feel Paul Nash's anger,
0:23:41 > 0:23:43the rage of a betrayed generation,
0:23:43 > 0:23:47in this, the most apocalyptic of his battlescapes,
0:23:47 > 0:23:51to which he gave the ironic title, We Are Making A New World.
0:23:53 > 0:23:55Nash wrote to his wife Margaret
0:23:55 > 0:23:59while he was painting it to say, "I am no longer an artist,
0:23:59 > 0:24:02"I am a messenger who will bring back word
0:24:02 > 0:24:03"from the men who are fighting
0:24:03 > 0:24:07"to those who want the war to go on forever.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11"It will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls."
0:24:13 > 0:24:17It's a painting that gives the lie to the idea that Nash
0:24:17 > 0:24:21left out the dead bodies of war, and painted only its landscapes.
0:24:21 > 0:24:24Because this landscape is a body.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27It's churned earth like burned flesh,
0:24:27 > 0:24:30cratered and bubbled and horribly melted.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33Its tree stumps like mutilated limbs.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39The red clouds in the sky like scarred and angry flesh.
0:24:40 > 0:24:44Duty and decorum and the dignity of the wounded
0:24:44 > 0:24:47meant that he couldn't actually paint the victims of war,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51but he found a way to paint their pain and suffering nonetheless.
0:24:53 > 0:24:55And its truth does still burn
0:24:55 > 0:25:01as brightly and defiantly as that Cyclops eye sun.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17After the war, Paul and Margaret Nash
0:25:17 > 0:25:20moved to Dymchurch on the coast of Kent.
0:25:20 > 0:25:22An intriguing choice.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25One of the closest places in all of England
0:25:25 > 0:25:27to the killing fields of Flanders.
0:25:27 > 0:25:31Nash would spend four difficult years here.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34Money was tight, but there was little he could do about it.
0:25:36 > 0:25:38He was suffering a breakdown.
0:25:40 > 0:25:42During the war,
0:25:42 > 0:25:45he'd painted landscapes to evoke the bodies of the dead.
0:25:45 > 0:25:50Now, when he was able to work, he painted landscapes of the mind.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52The mind of an uneasy survivor.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56The sea wall stands ready for the onset of the tide.
0:25:57 > 0:26:01The tide comes in, drowning the world.
0:26:01 > 0:26:03Or is this an image of Paul Nash's mind,
0:26:03 > 0:26:05drowning in unhappy feelings?
0:26:06 > 0:26:11There's no doubt Nash felt terribly alone during his time at Dymchurch.
0:26:11 > 0:26:14But gradually he came to realise that he wasn't the only painter
0:26:14 > 0:26:17struggling with a sense of personal trauma
0:26:17 > 0:26:20during these dislocated times.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33In Europe, a new movement of artists
0:26:33 > 0:26:36was developing a new language of art.
0:26:36 > 0:26:38The language of dream and nightmare.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42To express the sense that reality was out of joint.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48They called themselves Surrealists, and their work Surrealism.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50When Nash found out about Surrealism,
0:26:50 > 0:26:54it gave him a new sense of hope that he wasn't on his own.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59He was drawn to the pre-war cityscapes of Italian painter
0:26:59 > 0:27:02Giorgio De Chirico, who never signed up with the Surrealists
0:27:02 > 0:27:08but was admired by them as a pioneer of the ominous and the uncanny.
0:27:09 > 0:27:11During the later 1920s,
0:27:11 > 0:27:16Nash introduced unexpected dreamlike elements into his own pictures.
0:27:17 > 0:27:19Inexplicable objects,
0:27:19 > 0:27:21mystery buildings.
0:27:23 > 0:27:27These deliberately unsettling jigsaw compositions
0:27:27 > 0:27:29marked a bold change of direction.
0:27:30 > 0:27:33Nash wasn't attempting to capture a slice of the world,
0:27:33 > 0:27:35but a frame of mind.
0:27:36 > 0:27:40He developed the approach further during the following decade,
0:27:40 > 0:27:43becoming England's pre-eminent painter of the enigma.
0:27:47 > 0:27:51Paul Nash's paintings of the 1930s are very mysterious.
0:27:51 > 0:27:55Even the title of this one, Opening, is ambiguous.
0:27:55 > 0:27:58Does it refer to a physical opening, a noun,
0:27:58 > 0:28:00or could it be the verb, "opening".
0:28:00 > 0:28:03Is it a depiction of the process of opening up?
0:28:03 > 0:28:07If Nash is a surrealist, he is a very English kind of surrealist.
0:28:07 > 0:28:08Very reserved.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12His paintings are low-toned, they don't reach out and grab you.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16You have to reach into them to try and clutch at their meanings.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19I think in the case of this painting,
0:28:19 > 0:28:24I feel that it's Nash's way of painting his own state of mind
0:28:24 > 0:28:27at a kind of threshold moment in his own life.
0:28:27 > 0:28:30Its subject after all is a threshold.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33Two years before the picture was painted, his father had died.
0:28:33 > 0:28:35A great break in his life. They had been very close.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39His father had encouraged him in his desire to be an artist,
0:28:39 > 0:28:42against the conservative disapproval of the rest of the family.
0:28:42 > 0:28:45So his father has gone, and, on top of that,
0:28:45 > 0:28:48he's sold the family house, Iver Heath,
0:28:48 > 0:28:50which he loved, in Buckinghamshire.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53This detail here, the exposed brickwork,
0:28:53 > 0:28:57seems to me to suggest the idea of a house that's been left
0:28:57 > 0:28:59or perhaps abandoned.
0:28:59 > 0:29:04The opening perhaps suggests Nash's sense that he has to enter
0:29:04 > 0:29:07to embark on a new kind of life from now on.
0:29:07 > 0:29:11But there are also elements in the painting which suggest that,
0:29:11 > 0:29:13as far as he's concerned,
0:29:13 > 0:29:17that opening to a new life is not going to be easily found.
0:29:17 > 0:29:22There's a barrier right down the middle of this dream doorway.
0:29:22 > 0:29:24There's another barrier at the bottom.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28And, while the sea behind seems bright blue, calm,
0:29:28 > 0:29:31very much a Mediterranean Sea, not the Channel,
0:29:31 > 0:29:37while that seems to illustrate some idea in Nash's mind
0:29:37 > 0:29:40that he might find some form of tranquillity,
0:29:40 > 0:29:45he might find some form of beauty and fulfilment in his life,
0:29:45 > 0:29:48he knows that it's not going to be easy.
0:29:48 > 0:29:52At the heart of the painting falls a shadow.
0:29:55 > 0:29:58In an attempt to break out of the shadows,
0:29:58 > 0:30:01Nash put himself at the forefront of the English response
0:30:01 > 0:30:02to European Surrealism.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08In 1933, the usually solitary artist took the unusual step
0:30:08 > 0:30:12of founding a modern art group, Unit One.
0:30:13 > 0:30:15In their only show they exhibited works
0:30:15 > 0:30:17by some of the established members...
0:30:24 > 0:30:26Nash contributed a new canvas...
0:30:29 > 0:30:31..and said he wanted the work of the group
0:30:31 > 0:30:34to express a truly contemporary spirit.
0:30:34 > 0:30:37But a year after its founding, Unit One broke up.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43Surrealism had become part of Nash's "adventure",
0:30:43 > 0:30:45as he called his life.
0:30:45 > 0:30:49It spoke to his passion for the mysterious and spiritual.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52But what he did with it was so personal
0:30:52 > 0:30:55that he can't really be pigeonholed as a Surrealist.
0:30:55 > 0:30:57He was simply Paul Nash.
0:31:02 > 0:31:06In 1933 Nash made a trip to Avebury in Wiltshire
0:31:06 > 0:31:09where he visited the 4,000-year-old Neolithic site.
0:31:11 > 0:31:14He was captivated by its mystery and antiquity.
0:31:14 > 0:31:19He talked in a letter to Margaret of how happy he was in his new world.
0:31:21 > 0:31:24At this time Nash had begun to suffer with chronic,
0:31:24 > 0:31:27and sometimes life-threatening, asthma.
0:31:27 > 0:31:30Avebury, which he discovered one hot, dry summer,
0:31:30 > 0:31:35gave Nash joy, as he found he could breathe amongst these mysterious stones.
0:31:37 > 0:31:41Nobody knows exactly what they are, these great standing stones
0:31:41 > 0:31:47at Avebury, planted in the landscape like jagged teeth.
0:31:47 > 0:31:52Are they ancient remains of druidic rituals?
0:31:52 > 0:31:54Prehistoric tomb markers?
0:31:54 > 0:31:58It's a mystery, but I think that's exactly what drew Paul Nash to them.
0:31:58 > 0:32:02He could make of these forms what he liked.
0:32:02 > 0:32:06In his mind they became ghosts.
0:32:06 > 0:32:11He imagined them actually moving through the landscape when no-one was watching.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15He was fascinated by their textures, their surfaces,
0:32:15 > 0:32:20encrusted by time and nature with these shapes, these patterns,
0:32:20 > 0:32:26these marks of lichen growth and by their wonderfully suggestive forms.
0:32:26 > 0:32:30He needed something new, he needed to be reinvigorated
0:32:30 > 0:32:34and I think it was the sheer alienness, the foreignness,
0:32:34 > 0:32:38the weirdness of these forms that inspired him.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41They gave him a new language,
0:32:41 > 0:32:46a way of creating his own monuments to his own experience.
0:32:51 > 0:32:56Nash took the shapes and forms of the Avebury monoliths and made them
0:32:56 > 0:33:00part of his own teasing pictorial code,
0:33:00 > 0:33:03transformed them into his ciphers, his hieroglyphs.
0:33:04 > 0:33:08These stones of ancient origin and ritual significance became,
0:33:08 > 0:33:12for him, the carriers of other, perhaps more personal, meanings.
0:33:16 > 0:33:19The stone seems to me to have mutated into a shape
0:33:19 > 0:33:23very much like a human torso,
0:33:23 > 0:33:26and a rather battered one at that.
0:33:26 > 0:33:30It's headless, it's legless,
0:33:30 > 0:33:33there's the curve of its behind
0:33:33 > 0:33:35and there's the curve of the back,
0:33:35 > 0:33:37and what's it made of?
0:33:38 > 0:33:41The paint has a kind of violence about it that suggests
0:33:41 > 0:33:44perhaps a bruised skin,
0:33:44 > 0:33:47but in other places it seems more metallic, like rusting iron,
0:33:47 > 0:33:52perhaps a memory of the corrugated fencing of the trenches.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56Some of these shapes might almost evoke mortars or shell holes.
0:33:57 > 0:34:02So, to me, it looks very much like a shattered body,
0:34:02 > 0:34:04shaped somehow by conflict.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07So from an image of peace, tranquillity,
0:34:07 > 0:34:11of spellbinding ancient civilisation, he's created
0:34:11 > 0:34:15a modern image, an image of his own sense of dislocation,
0:34:15 > 0:34:20of violence, of the destiny of man perhaps in the 20th century.
0:34:20 > 0:34:24This brooding, broken body.
0:34:25 > 0:34:29From the ghost of the ancient past he's created
0:34:29 > 0:34:33an image that suggests the ghosts of war.
0:34:38 > 0:34:42At about this time Margaret gave Nash a box camera.
0:34:44 > 0:34:47And he began to photograph everything he could.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52Using his new toy like a Surrealist's notebook,
0:34:52 > 0:34:54he captured images as aides-memoire,
0:34:54 > 0:34:57inspirations for later work.
0:34:58 > 0:35:01And in 1935 Nash found himself in a place
0:35:01 > 0:35:04especially rich in such images,
0:35:04 > 0:35:08a place which, he said, with its "beauty, ugliness
0:35:08 > 0:35:11"and power to disquiet,"
0:35:11 > 0:35:13had a "natural surrealism".
0:35:13 > 0:35:16The Dorset town of Swanage.
0:35:33 > 0:35:37Ah, the joys of the English seaside in the rain!
0:35:37 > 0:35:41This is Number 2 The Parade in Swanage, where Nash stayed.
0:35:41 > 0:35:44This was his vantage point.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47A little elevated wrought-iron balcony
0:35:47 > 0:35:50from which you can see the sea wall,
0:35:50 > 0:35:53the pier and the town beyond.
0:35:53 > 0:35:57And what's wonderful about this is that very little has changed
0:35:57 > 0:36:01since 1935 when Nash first came here.
0:36:01 > 0:36:04So we can compare what he saw with what he painted
0:36:04 > 0:36:08and when we do so, what's striking I think is
0:36:08 > 0:36:11he talked about "unrealism",
0:36:11 > 0:36:14or being a "seaside Surrealist".
0:36:14 > 0:36:16When you compare the scene with what he made of it,
0:36:16 > 0:36:19I think you can really see that, because
0:36:19 > 0:36:20if I tried to take a photograph...
0:36:24 > 0:36:26I have to be so... I mean, to frame it
0:36:26 > 0:36:29the way that Nash painted it,
0:36:29 > 0:36:32I have to go right in and I have to crop like mad,
0:36:32 > 0:36:35and even then I can only just get a part of it
0:36:35 > 0:36:39and I think when you realise how much he altered what he saw,
0:36:39 > 0:36:41you get a sense of what he was after.
0:36:41 > 0:36:44He was after essential form, essential rhythm,
0:36:44 > 0:36:48the energy of the sea, the waves lapping over that great
0:36:48 > 0:36:50protuberance at the end.
0:36:51 > 0:36:56Now, what's behind the energy of these images?
0:37:00 > 0:37:05I think part of the answer may lie in an encounter
0:37:05 > 0:37:11that took place in 1935 just at the top of that hill,
0:37:11 > 0:37:14in a hotel that's now no longer there.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23In July of that year, in the bar of the Grosvenor Hotel,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26Nash and his wife were introduced to the beautiful young artist
0:37:26 > 0:37:31Eileen Agar and her Hungarian husband to be, Joseph Bard.
0:37:34 > 0:37:36Agar was a budding surrealist
0:37:36 > 0:37:38and excited to meet Nash.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42Together they went on long walks along the beach,
0:37:42 > 0:37:46looking for found objects to include in their Surrealist experiments.
0:37:48 > 0:37:53What resulted is some of Nash's most adventurous and unusual work.
0:37:54 > 0:37:58In this collage, titled Swanage, we have a Nash-painted landscape
0:37:58 > 0:38:01with Surrealist found objects in the foreground.
0:38:04 > 0:38:08To the right, a large barnacled anchor, which Agar gave to Nash.
0:38:10 > 0:38:13Their relationship, though, was not restricted to work.
0:38:15 > 0:38:19Eileen was very attractive, she was very beautiful,
0:38:19 > 0:38:21and very flirtatious, I think.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25There was an immediate attraction on his part.
0:38:25 > 0:38:28On her part, I'm not quite so sure.
0:38:28 > 0:38:30I think she was more impressed by the fact that
0:38:30 > 0:38:33he already had a name, she didn't.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35He was... Since the First World War
0:38:35 > 0:38:37and his paintings from the First World War,
0:38:37 > 0:38:41he had quite a name in the London art world and she didn't then.
0:38:41 > 0:38:45And I think that was perhaps what attracted her initially.
0:38:45 > 0:38:49What do we know about Nash's health because I have the sense that
0:38:49 > 0:38:53when he met her his health was already turning bad
0:38:53 > 0:38:57and that there's a sense in which his relationship with Eileen
0:38:57 > 0:39:00is almost like an injection of adrenaline,
0:39:00 > 0:39:02it's something that gets him going again.
0:39:02 > 0:39:04Oh, I couldn't agree more.
0:39:04 > 0:39:07I mean, I think... You know, if you fall in love,
0:39:07 > 0:39:09you have a creative energy, don't you?
0:39:09 > 0:39:12And there's no doubt at all that he had this in a way that
0:39:12 > 0:39:14perhaps he'd never had before.
0:39:14 > 0:39:17The amount of paintings, about 80 in the year,
0:39:17 > 0:39:20it really was only just over a year that he was here.
0:39:20 > 0:39:23So there's no doubt at all in my mind
0:39:23 > 0:39:25that it was a very creative partnership.
0:39:25 > 0:39:32Later on he wrote to her that Margaret, his wife, said,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35"Oh, Eileen only wants you for sex."
0:39:35 > 0:39:39And in her book she says, huh! That's not likely, just look at him,
0:39:39 > 0:39:44how he was, sick and quite ill all the time,
0:39:44 > 0:39:49compared to Joseph, who was a very masculine, sort of hairy man! Yes.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53So you think that Nash was genuinely in a love affair as well as...
0:39:53 > 0:39:55Oh, yes, I do. I do.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05Nash expressed his feelings for Agar in numerous letters.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10Some of his correspondence with her is still preserved today
0:40:10 > 0:40:11in the Tate Archive in London.
0:40:14 > 0:40:19This really is a very poignant gathering of material,
0:40:19 > 0:40:25a portrait of an affair, in fragments, glimpse and snatches.
0:40:26 > 0:40:28This is beautiful.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31A piece of brown Braille paper -
0:40:31 > 0:40:34he'd write on anything he'd get his hands on -
0:40:34 > 0:40:38and he's drawn this beautiful picture of Eileen
0:40:38 > 0:40:41wearing rather risque underwear, look at her -
0:40:41 > 0:40:45stockings, no suspenders, just tied with a ribbon,
0:40:45 > 0:40:48and she's got a choker around her neck as well.
0:40:48 > 0:40:51He's besotted with her at this point.
0:40:51 > 0:40:53"My chaffinch,
0:40:53 > 0:40:56"I can never get off my letters and presents in time.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00"You know, so you won't be surprised that this latecomer
0:41:00 > 0:41:04"bears my love and good wishes. Three little snakes for you,
0:41:04 > 0:41:08"the practicable one you will wear, of course."
0:41:09 > 0:41:11I wonder what he means by that.
0:41:12 > 0:41:14Then there's this...
0:41:15 > 0:41:22..it's actually an illustration for Thomas Browne's Urn Burial.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26It's a hand-coloured lithograph but he's dedicated it
0:41:26 > 0:41:31to Eileen and it's full of the imagery that she loved,
0:41:31 > 0:41:34jellyfishes hovering through the air. There's one,
0:41:34 > 0:41:37perhaps a symbolic representation of her husband
0:41:37 > 0:41:42as she floats wide-eyed through space,
0:41:42 > 0:41:44a figure seems to be falling down the stairs.
0:41:44 > 0:41:48It's a dream image of what, for Nash,
0:41:48 > 0:41:52seemed like a dream relationship.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55And by the time he sends this postcard...
0:41:56 > 0:42:00..the affair has become slightly off/on.
0:42:00 > 0:42:03He is addressing it...
0:42:03 > 0:42:05He remains with his wife, she remains with her husband.
0:42:05 > 0:42:08He's addressing it to her under her married name.
0:42:08 > 0:42:10Mrs Joseph Bard.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15And he begins the postcard with a reference to her husband.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18"When I was looking for Joseph's birthday card
0:42:18 > 0:42:21"I was astonished by this. Don't you think it's rather fine?
0:42:21 > 0:42:24"Oddly alive, as if it might speak."
0:42:24 > 0:42:26- And... - HE COUGHS SUGGESTIVELY
0:42:26 > 0:42:29..that's the image itself that he's sent to her.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34I think Sigmund Freud might have had SOMETHING to say about that.
0:42:38 > 0:42:41During her affair Agar visited the South of France
0:42:41 > 0:42:45with some of the famous members of Surrealism,
0:42:45 > 0:42:47including Picasso,
0:42:47 > 0:42:50Man Ray, and the poet Paul Eluard.
0:42:50 > 0:42:54Nash discovered that Agar had had a relationship with the married Eluard.
0:42:54 > 0:42:59Nash angrily challenged Agar and she tried to break things off with Nash.
0:43:00 > 0:43:02Nash, though, tried to dissuade her.
0:43:02 > 0:43:05He didn't want to lose his chaffinch.
0:43:05 > 0:43:06In a letter he wrote,
0:43:06 > 0:43:09"If we break now we break at the peak of our flight,
0:43:09 > 0:43:13"where we had climbed like two birds who make love in midair,
0:43:13 > 0:43:15"heedless of where they soar.
0:43:15 > 0:43:18"We have not yet taken down our bright sky."
0:43:19 > 0:43:22But she'd already begun to move away from him.
0:43:43 > 0:43:46With the outbreak of World War II in 1939,
0:43:46 > 0:43:48Nash found a renewed patriotism.
0:43:49 > 0:43:55He wrote of his desire to use his art and imagination as a weapon to beat the Nazis.
0:43:59 > 0:44:04Nash was appointed a war artist for the second time in his life,
0:44:04 > 0:44:07and the War Artists' Advisory Committee considered
0:44:07 > 0:44:11Nash's visionary work to suit him for the Air Ministry.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16Nash himself was desperate to fly.
0:44:16 > 0:44:20He'd moved with his ever-supportive wife Margaret to Oxford,
0:44:20 > 0:44:23where he'd watch Allied bombers group in the skies above.
0:44:24 > 0:44:27Nash had loved the idea of flight since childhood.
0:44:27 > 0:44:31His autobiography opens with the rapturous description
0:44:31 > 0:44:33of a recurring boyhood dream
0:44:33 > 0:44:36of being able to fly or somehow levitate.
0:44:38 > 0:44:41"A spring from the ground would carry me up and onward,
0:44:41 > 0:44:45"twirling at times like a leaf on the still air,
0:44:45 > 0:44:48"but always able just sufficiently to steer course.
0:44:49 > 0:44:53"All my life I've enjoyed this mysterious exciting experience.
0:44:54 > 0:44:59"No other adventure of sleep is so disappointing to wake from.
0:44:59 > 0:45:01"For, while indulged in,
0:45:01 > 0:45:04"it has a compelling reality like no other fantasy."
0:45:17 > 0:45:20In one of his most ambitious paintings of the Second World War,
0:45:20 > 0:45:21Battle Of Britain,
0:45:21 > 0:45:26you can sense Nash's love of flight, tempered by abhorrence.
0:45:28 > 0:45:32He shows planes looping and circling as they engage in combat.
0:45:32 > 0:45:34The wildness of their movements
0:45:34 > 0:45:37preserved in the traces of their passage.
0:45:38 > 0:45:40Their trails are like man-made clouds.
0:45:42 > 0:45:46Parodies of the emanations of nature which ominously interrupt
0:45:46 > 0:45:49the peace and tranquillity of a bright blue sky.
0:45:51 > 0:45:56They've scarred the very air with their fumes and machine-gun fire,
0:45:56 > 0:45:58just as the shells of the First World War
0:45:58 > 0:46:01had churned up the fields of Flanders.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06A single doomed plane is shown about to crash.
0:46:07 > 0:46:09Falling from air to earth.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13Its pilot about to meet a lonely Icarus death.
0:46:17 > 0:46:21Nash may have wanted to join battle with the Nazis himself
0:46:21 > 0:46:23but he couldn't fly,
0:46:23 > 0:46:25not even an observation plane.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30Due to his respiratory problems Nash never did make it up into the sky.
0:46:32 > 0:46:34Instead he depicted crashed enemy bombers
0:46:34 > 0:46:36decaying in the landscape.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39Images of loss and failure.
0:46:39 > 0:46:41His asthma worsened
0:46:41 > 0:46:43and Margaret became a full-time nurse to him.
0:46:45 > 0:46:47He still wrote to Agar,
0:46:47 > 0:46:49but their relationship was spiralling down.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55This letter, written on -
0:46:55 > 0:46:58I won't pick it up because it's very, very fragile -
0:46:58 > 0:47:01written on grey notepaper
0:47:01 > 0:47:06in red pencil that's so faint that you can now barely read it,
0:47:06 > 0:47:08you can just make out the odd word,
0:47:08 > 0:47:13but luckily for us when it was bequeathed to the Tate Archive
0:47:13 > 0:47:17one of the archivists here transcribed what could be read
0:47:17 > 0:47:19at that point and typed it out, so we've got this.
0:47:20 > 0:47:23"May I ask just what all this is about?"
0:47:23 > 0:47:26It's an angry letter, Nash to Eileen.
0:47:26 > 0:47:28"I find now that you are still in Earl's Court
0:47:28 > 0:47:31"where I presumed you might be when I wrote and that you're NOT ill."
0:47:31 > 0:47:33She's been giving him the run-around.
0:47:33 > 0:47:35"So why don't you behave?
0:47:35 > 0:47:38"Don't tell me Joseph occupies the whole of your world,
0:47:38 > 0:47:41"or is it contracting for other reasons?
0:47:41 > 0:47:44"You are so lucky to be living in London,
0:47:44 > 0:47:48"able to see so many people and share so many other lives.
0:47:48 > 0:47:52"Remember I live for weeks without meeting either friends or new faces.
0:47:52 > 0:47:56"The few, the very few I love are infinitely precious.
0:47:56 > 0:48:00"You have always been someone I can't lose."
0:48:07 > 0:48:10When Eileen received the letter,
0:48:10 > 0:48:12she tore it up.
0:48:14 > 0:48:18She later stuck it back together again but...
0:48:19 > 0:48:23..this marks the end of the affair.
0:48:26 > 0:48:30Afterwards Nash threw himself into his work.
0:48:30 > 0:48:32He repeatedly visited the aircraft dump
0:48:32 > 0:48:35of enemy planes in Cowley, Oxfordshire.
0:48:36 > 0:48:40Here, in the only existing footage of Paul Nash,
0:48:40 > 0:48:43you see him carrying out the preparatory sketches
0:48:43 > 0:48:45for one of his true masterpieces.
0:48:46 > 0:48:50A painting he gave the German title Totes Meer.
0:48:51 > 0:48:52Dead Sea.
0:48:55 > 0:48:57Nash hated Hitler,
0:48:57 > 0:49:00the "failure artist" he called him.
0:49:00 > 0:49:02He detested Nazism
0:49:02 > 0:49:06and I think by depicting this great sea
0:49:06 > 0:49:11of wrecked Luftwaffe fuselage
0:49:11 > 0:49:13and aircraft
0:49:13 > 0:49:17he is intending to suggest
0:49:17 > 0:49:23that the great tide of Nazi invasion
0:49:23 > 0:49:25that had laid waste to Europe
0:49:25 > 0:49:29is now finally at the ebb, it's on the way out.
0:49:31 > 0:49:35I think it's suffused with a kind of melancholy that's unavoidable.
0:49:35 > 0:49:39It's strange, it's weird, it is dreamlike.
0:49:39 > 0:49:42That landscape that lies beyond
0:49:42 > 0:49:44the wave of wrecked metal
0:49:44 > 0:49:48has an utterly haunting quality to it,
0:49:48 > 0:49:52it draws you in to its vertiginous distance.
0:49:54 > 0:49:56The owl,
0:49:56 > 0:49:59symbol of Minerva, symbol of wisdom,
0:49:59 > 0:50:02hovering over the wrecked aircraft.
0:50:03 > 0:50:07And I wonder if there aren't elements of Nash's own
0:50:07 > 0:50:09melancholy embedded within it.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14It's about something that was flying
0:50:14 > 0:50:15that's fallen.
0:50:16 > 0:50:18That's been wrecked.
0:50:18 > 0:50:22Could it also be an allegory of his love for Eileen Agar?
0:50:22 > 0:50:27The great love of his life, which is now finally utterly over.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32Could there be elements of reference perhaps to
0:50:32 > 0:50:34his own personal predicament?
0:50:34 > 0:50:39He is increasingly ill, his asthma is getting worse and worse.
0:50:39 > 0:50:41He can barely breathe.
0:50:41 > 0:50:43Does he sense that...
0:50:43 > 0:50:48Paul Nash has identified himself so often with a bird in flight,
0:50:48 > 0:50:52does he now feel that his own path is downward...
0:50:54 > 0:50:58..towards something like this cemetery
0:50:58 > 0:51:01formed from tangled, broken wings?
0:51:02 > 0:51:06It's a beautiful picture, and I suspect a very personal one.
0:51:11 > 0:51:15In 1942, with the war still raging,
0:51:15 > 0:51:17Nash escaped once more to nature.
0:51:20 > 0:51:23With aggressive asthma, he began a series of paintings
0:51:23 > 0:51:26of the place where his adventure had started.
0:51:26 > 0:51:28The Wittenham Clumps.
0:51:29 > 0:51:35So, tell me about Nash's approach to the Clumps late in life?
0:51:36 > 0:51:40He went to visit the house of a friend in Boars Hill,
0:51:40 > 0:51:42which is just about eight miles
0:51:42 > 0:51:44over there in the distance,
0:51:44 > 0:51:50and he found there was a good view of the Clumps from inside the house.
0:51:50 > 0:51:53He was suffering with asthma so he wasn't a well man,
0:51:53 > 0:51:57he wasn't able to get out and about as much as he would have liked
0:51:57 > 0:52:01but he was able to view the Clumps through binoculars
0:52:01 > 0:52:05and he used them to create
0:52:05 > 0:52:10a whole new series of paintings of the Wittenham Clumps.
0:52:12 > 0:52:17His early representations of the Clumps are very neat and precise,
0:52:17 > 0:52:19every last detail is recorded,
0:52:19 > 0:52:21but when he gets to Boars Hill
0:52:21 > 0:52:25suddenly his imagination soars
0:52:25 > 0:52:30and he paints these wonderful oils full of mystery and atmosphere
0:52:30 > 0:52:36and he described the Clumps as having a compelling magic for him.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42And he used to add what he felt was right in the foreground.
0:52:42 > 0:52:46He once said, "I don't bother what grows where very much,
0:52:46 > 0:52:49"I find things grow where I paint them."
0:52:49 > 0:52:52And I think that's a lovely way of describing
0:52:52 > 0:52:55how he set about just making these scenes for himself.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58So one thing that you really feel when you're up here
0:52:58 > 0:53:01is you just feel how much air there is, how much wind,
0:53:01 > 0:53:04how much breeze, how much sky.
0:53:04 > 0:53:06I can't help wondering if Nash, poor old Nash,
0:53:06 > 0:53:10down there with his binoculars, wasn't looking up to the Clumps,
0:53:10 > 0:53:14almost trying to draw that air into his lungs by painting.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18He wrote that he could feel himself making his first drawings again.
0:53:18 > 0:53:22He thought that they were some of the best drawings he ever made
0:53:22 > 0:53:26and that excitement came back to him
0:53:26 > 0:53:29as he recalled the first time he came here.
0:53:29 > 0:53:31Mm.
0:53:31 > 0:53:34So it's almost a form of rejuvenation to return.
0:53:34 > 0:53:38- Very definitely.- At the end. To become young again.- Yes.
0:53:41 > 0:53:45Wittenham had given Nash so much as a young man
0:53:45 > 0:53:47and now it gave him space for his imagination
0:53:47 > 0:53:51as his frail body, wracked by asthma, declined.
0:53:54 > 0:53:58I think there's something very moving about Paul Nash's last years
0:53:58 > 0:54:01here, close to the Wittenham Clumps.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05He knows his body's giving out on him,
0:54:05 > 0:54:07he's like one of those aeroplanes,
0:54:07 > 0:54:09grounded aeroplanes that he'd painted in Totes Meer.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11His time is nearly up.
0:54:11 > 0:54:16And yet, he responds with this tremendous surge of energy,
0:54:16 > 0:54:19painting this landscape, which meant so much to him,
0:54:19 > 0:54:21again and again.
0:54:21 > 0:54:27Of course the scene itself in 1943, 1944, was nothing like it is now.
0:54:27 > 0:54:32This was, in effect, part of the theatre of war.
0:54:32 > 0:54:36The whole area was fenced off like a military installation,
0:54:36 > 0:54:39and on the nights of the great bombing raids
0:54:39 > 0:54:43up to 800 planes would gather in formation in the skies
0:54:43 > 0:54:47directly above the Clumps, from the American airbase over there
0:54:47 > 0:54:51and the RAF airbase over there, before flying off to wreak havoc.
0:54:51 > 0:54:55Yet, in Paul Nash's paintings, there is no trace of that.
0:54:55 > 0:54:59Yes, there is unease, there's turbulence,
0:54:59 > 0:55:03shafts of light that seem almost like search beams.
0:55:03 > 0:55:06But in other pictures there's a tremendous sense of
0:55:06 > 0:55:07tranquillity and hope -
0:55:07 > 0:55:11religious symbols appear for the first time in his work.
0:55:11 > 0:55:13The lily, symbol of the Virgin Mary,
0:55:13 > 0:55:18the sunflower, emblem of the soul that turns always to face God.
0:55:18 > 0:55:22There's a softness and a lightness in the palette.
0:55:22 > 0:55:27It's as if he's painting an Eden of the imagination,
0:55:27 > 0:55:31some kind of paradise to which he hopes he will return.
0:55:33 > 0:55:36To which he hopes he will be transported
0:55:36 > 0:55:40by the inevitable fact of his own death.
0:55:40 > 0:55:44There's the sense that he's getting ready to meet his maker.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47They're among the last paintings he ever created.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59Solstice Of The Sunflower, 1945,
0:55:59 > 0:56:02is one of Nash's final paintings.
0:56:02 > 0:56:04In the background are his Wittenham Clumps,
0:56:04 > 0:56:06bathed in the solstice sun.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09Centre stage, a sunflower,
0:56:09 > 0:56:11almost floating.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15Nash said he saw the sunflower like a wheel of fire,
0:56:15 > 0:56:18but with its open form and trail of cords
0:56:18 > 0:56:22tying it to the sun it also resembles a parachute.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28Nash had been haunted by fears of a parachute invasion of Britain
0:56:28 > 0:56:30during the Second World War.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33But was also fascinated by their movements.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37He called them aerial flowers.
0:56:38 > 0:56:40Nash was very frightened of death
0:56:40 > 0:56:43but told a friend he was able to face the end of his life
0:56:43 > 0:56:47by persuading himself that it was, "akin to flowers
0:56:47 > 0:56:52"aerially borne, a kind of eternity of fragrant and gentle drifting."
0:56:54 > 0:56:57So is the sunflower parachute perhaps Nash's vision
0:56:57 > 0:57:01of himself gently drifting into the hereafter?
0:57:10 > 0:57:16On 11 July 1946, Paul Nash died in his sleep in Boscombe,
0:57:16 > 0:57:20a seaside resort, on a trip back to his beloved Dorset.
0:57:21 > 0:57:23Margaret followed his final wishes
0:57:23 > 0:57:26and Nash is buried near the family home in Iver Heath.
0:57:27 > 0:57:32Back close to the Bird Garden and trees that began his life and work.
0:57:32 > 0:57:34Close to the landscapes that inspired Nash
0:57:34 > 0:57:37to become one of Britain's great landscape painters.
0:57:40 > 0:57:42Nash remained enigmatic to the end.
0:57:44 > 0:57:46A strange birdlike creature,
0:57:46 > 0:57:49perhaps from one of his paintings, perches on his grave.
0:57:49 > 0:57:51Is it guarding him?
0:57:51 > 0:57:52Is it haunting him?
0:57:55 > 0:57:58Nash had worked magic with the materials given to him,
0:57:58 > 0:58:02harsh experience, an uneasy mind and a frail body.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06And he had always been haunted,
0:58:06 > 0:58:08haunted by life,
0:58:08 > 0:58:09by death
0:58:09 > 0:58:11and by the ghosts of war.