Interior of a Wood, Whiteleaf

This attractive painting has the pen and ink component so typical of Nash’s earlier watercolours, making the strong contrast between drawn form and volumetric colour which is so much a part of the work’s authority and presence. The picture’s assertive but engaging rhythms are propelled by pen, while the watercolour conveys the intensity of the artist’s emotional response. After the First World War, the beech woods at Whiteleaf in the Chilterns were a favourite motif for Nash, who first painted there in the summer of 1919. Buckinghamshire was the focus of his attention in these years, and he settled at Meadle, near Aylesbury, in 1922. He became known for his distinctive paintings of the area, the artist Robert Bevan writing: ‘I see the Chilterns quite differently since John Nash started painting them. And that doesn’t happen with many landscape painters…’

A.L.