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Lot Essay
The present work depicts a stone statue outside of the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. The building was erected in 1664-8 to a design by Sir Christopher Wren and serves as a venue for public ceremonies for the University. The series of statues are known as the Bearded Gentlemen and were placed around the gates as guardians.
Nash wrote to a friend, Lillah Macarthy in May 1932 asking for accomodation in Oxford and it could have been during this trip that he executed Souvenir of Oxford (see A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, p. 420).
Causey notices in Nash's work of this time the absence of the human figure and comments on these works, 'Now the only kind of specific human figure which remained effective for him was the statue, which, though it is a representation of the human, exists within conventions of its own and therefore possesses the degree of generality and separateness from ordinary life that Nash required. His most effective use of statues was in his drawings of the stone heads outside the Sheldonian in Oxford. In Souvenir of Oxford Nash obtained a weight and solemnity from his subjects that made them a kind of bridge between human and subhuman life.' (see A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, pp. 208-9).
Nash wrote to a friend, Lillah Macarthy in May 1932 asking for accomodation in Oxford and it could have been during this trip that he executed Souvenir of Oxford (see A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, p. 420).
Causey notices in Nash's work of this time the absence of the human figure and comments on these works, 'Now the only kind of specific human figure which remained effective for him was the statue, which, though it is a representation of the human, exists within conventions of its own and therefore possesses the degree of generality and separateness from ordinary life that Nash required. His most effective use of statues was in his drawings of the stone heads outside the Sheldonian in Oxford. In Souvenir of Oxford Nash obtained a weight and solemnity from his subjects that made them a kind of bridge between human and subhuman life.' (see A. Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, pp. 208-9).