Paul Nash
Born in London in 1889, Paul Nash was about to become one of the greatest British artists in the early half of the twentieth century. He would eventually produce some of the most well known images of the First and Second World Wars, but like any artist, his influence came from somewhere. The son of a lawyer, Paul Nash was educated at St. Paul’s school then attended the Slade School of art for a year. There, he studied art and poetry. When the First World War came about, Nash enlisted into the group known as the Artists’ Rifles. After training for the war, he was sent to the Western front in 1917; eventually being ranked as second lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment. Nash was injured when falling into a trench, breaking a rib, and was sent home. While he was recovering from his injury in London, he began to build up a sequence of sketches from his time out on the battlefield and the images he had seen. Because of his firsthand experience in the war, Nash was able to take his background in art and his images from the war and put them onto a canvas. He saw men lying on the ground, taking their last breath. He saw the man-made bunkers. He smelt the odors of blood, sweat and dead bodies. He heard the screams of his fellow soldiers and the repetitive shooting of guns. He felt the pain of being away from home, in a foreign country, surrounded by his comrades, facing the enemy. He had all the experience needed to paint these scenes of war, and so he did. Later that year, his work was put on display and was widely accepted and printed. Vividly, he remembered the battlefield and he displayed that for the rest of the world to see. After the first showing of Nash’s work, the War Propaganda Bureau offered him a position as a wartime artist. He accepted the position so he would be able to tell the story of the war and show the terror that fighting causes. Nash would send these back to Britain so the people on the home front had an idea of the types of situations...