Cumberland Landscape

Andrew Causey suggests that the present work is titled 'Cumberland Landscape' and comments, 'The picture was titled Landscape by Margaret Nash and dated 1923. It is known to the author only in a photograph. The subject strongly resembles 438 [Cumberland Landscape, 1924, pencil and chalk] and 439 [Cumberland Landscape, 1924, pencil and chalk] which were certainly made when Nash was staying with the Nicholsons at Bankshead, Cumberland, in 1924. An oil painting of Cumberland, perhaps made on this visit, the only one Nash is known to have made, is recorded in a letter from Nash to his wife of 11 March 1927: 'I have completely resuscitated the large Cumberland oil which now promises to be quite a good picture.' The areas in which this oil differs most in design from the Cumberland watercolours of 1924, such as the foreground gate and posts, and the barn, are tighter and more structured in handling, consonant with the later date of 1927, when Nash would in any case no longer have the details of the scene firmly in his mind. The strong argument for identifying this oil with the 'large Cumberland oil' is challenged if the size of '20 x 24' inches noted by Margaret Nash on the back of a photograph is correct; this was the artist's smallest regular canvas size' (loc. cit).