Silbury Hill

'Silbury, as might be expected, intrigued Nash: its clear, plain, and - to Nash - symbolic shape was both palpable and inscrutable. In the oil painting Silbury Hill [Causey no. 880] he hinted at its symbolical meaning, its special, reserved ambience, with the closed gate and the pyramidal tumulus beyond, while constructing at the same time elaborate formal congruences of triangles within the over-all design. In the slightly later watercolour [the present work] he revealed a little more of his reaction to the hill's shape by adding a ladder leaning against the mound in front of it. This was no more than a now familiar Nash image, but there could be special interest in this if the idea was suggested by a postcard he had of Maiden Castle [Causey pl. 313]. It is not just that both are sites of ancient occupation, but that the postcard and watercolour are complementary images: in one the ladder comes up out of a dark pit, in the other it seems to continue its journey up the side of the hill; the sequence seems a characteristic product of Nash's mind' (see A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, p. 265).