Mineral Objects

Details

Paul Nash (1889-1946)
Mineral Objects
signed with monogram (centre right)
oil on canvas
19¾ x 23¾ in. (50 x 60.5 cm.)
Painted in 1935

Provenance

Margaret Nash, sale; Sotheby's, 6 April 1960, lot 86 (300gns.).
Matthiesen, London.
Redfern Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owners.

Literature

The Studio, 109, June 1935, p.226 (illustrated).
D. Sutton, Artist in Search of the Invisible, Country Life, 13 April 1961, p.818 (illustrated).
Apollo, LXXIII, 434, April 1961, p.128 (illustrated).
A. Bertram, Paul Nash: The Portrait of an Artist, London, 1955, p.242 as 'Rotary Composition'.
P. Nash, Display Volume, 1930-34, no.46.
A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, no.815, pl.VI.

Exhibited

London, Leicester Galleries, Summer Exhibition, 1935, no.99 as 'Spatial Composition'.
London, Artists International Association, Artists Against Fascism and War, November 1935, no.84 as 'Rotary Composition'.
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, International Exhibition of Paintings, October-December 1936, no.114, pl.46 as 'Rotary Composition'.
London, Leicester Galleries, Recent Work by Paul Nash, May-June 1938, no.32.
Bath, Contemporary Art Society, Victoria Art Gallery, British Painting Today, 1940, no.40.
London, Redfern Gallery, Paul Nash, January 1944, no.23.
South Africa, British Council, Contemporary British Paintings and Drawings, 1947-48.
London, Leicester Galleries, Paul Nash A Private Collection, May 1953, no.30.
London, Redfern Gallery, Summer, 1960, no.317.
London, Redfern Gallery, Paul Nash, April 1961, no.71.
London, Tate Gallery, Paul Nash, November-December 1975, no.152, illustrated p.86: this exhibition travelled to Plymouth, City Art Gallery, January-February 1976; Colchester, The Minories, February-March 1976; Bradford, Cartwright Hall, March-April 1976; Manchester, City Art Gallery, April-May 1976.
Paisley, Museum and Art Gallery, Scottish Arts Council Touring Exhibition, Ben Nicholson: Still Life & Abstraction, March-October 1985, no.5: this exhibition travelled to Ayr, Maclaurin Gallery; Orkney, Pier Art Centre; Kirkcaldy, Museum and Art Gallery; and Aberdeen, Art Space.
Finland, Punkaharju, Retretti Art Centre, Surrealism in Visual Arts and Film, May-September 1987 (not numbered).
Chichester, Pallant House, Paul Nash Megaliths and Moonscapes, May 1989, no.11.

Lot Essay

The objects depicted were based on those commonly found on the shore of Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset and locally known as 'coal money'. These were connected with the Roman shale industry and Nash would have seen them in Dorchester Museum. He described them in his Dorset Shell Guide, London, 1936, pp.16-17.
Nash wrote of the compositions from 1935 'These groups are impressive as forms opposed to their surroundings, both by virtue of their actual composition of lines and masses and planes, directions and volume; and in the irrational sense, their suggestion of a super-reality. They are dramatic, also, however as symbols of their antiquity, as hallowed remnants of an almost unknown civilization'. (see A. Bertram, loc. cit.).

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