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Lot Essay
In an undated letter Nash wrote to Mercia Oakley, 'I will be your tree, your friend thro good and evil ... Do you realise the full significance of 'tree' or what it would try to mean to you: A shelter, a shade, a consoling old thing, a strong kind friend to come to'.
'Nash's concern for seasonal recurrence made it natural for him to represent death through landscape. In 1912 Nash had told Bottomley: 'I sincerely love & worship trees & know they are people', and he had treated the great elms at Iver Heath as something close to ancestor figures. In 1922 he had given The Lonely Tree [Causey no. 322], the watercolour study for Autumn Landscape, to his father as a Christmas present. The tree had a presence and power which enabled Nash to use it as a private means of communication' (A. Causey, op. cit, pp. 171-172).
Clare Colvin comments, 'So there is a double meaning; on the one hand the tree is a symbol of strength and stability, and on the other it has human qualities and watches over the landscape. This suggestion that the elms are witnesses is contained in the poem Nash sent to Mercia Oakley in 1909'.
'O dreaming trees sunk in a swoon of sleep
What have ye seen in those mysterious places?
What images? What faces?
What unknown pageant thro' these hollows moves
At night? What blood-fights have ye seen?
What scenes of life & death? What haunted loves?'
(see Exhibition catalogue, Paul Nash Places, London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward, 1989, pp. 12-13).
'Nash's concern for seasonal recurrence made it natural for him to represent death through landscape. In 1912 Nash had told Bottomley: 'I sincerely love & worship trees & know they are people', and he had treated the great elms at Iver Heath as something close to ancestor figures. In 1922 he had given The Lonely Tree [Causey no. 322], the watercolour study for Autumn Landscape, to his father as a Christmas present. The tree had a presence and power which enabled Nash to use it as a private means of communication' (A. Causey, op. cit, pp. 171-172).
Clare Colvin comments, 'So there is a double meaning; on the one hand the tree is a symbol of strength and stability, and on the other it has human qualities and watches over the landscape. This suggestion that the elms are witnesses is contained in the poem Nash sent to Mercia Oakley in 1909'.
'O dreaming trees sunk in a swoon of sleep
What have ye seen in those mysterious places?
What images? What faces?
What unknown pageant thro' these hollows moves
At night? What blood-fights have ye seen?
What scenes of life & death? What haunted loves?'
(see Exhibition catalogue, Paul Nash Places, London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward, 1989, pp. 12-13).