Barbara in the Garden, 1913-1914

Barbara in the Garden 1913-1914 by Paul Nash (1889-1946). Watercolour.

In a garden in summertime two women walk arm-in-arm, one carrying a spray of foliage. They both have long loose hair and wear long gowns. The garden is bounded by a low wall flanked by a variety of shrubs and trees both deciduous and evergreen. Beyond the wall, which crosses the composition horizontally, lies a landscape of green fields beneath a blue sky. A third figure stands with her back towards the viewer looking out across the landscape. A small group of peewits fly across the sky.

In this picture Nash painted his favourite view of the garden from a ground floor room of the family home at Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. Nash’s younger sister Barbara, appears in the picture. It is extremely rare for Nash to paint figures as life drawing was never his strong point and figures seldom feature in his work. Gardens and trees were favourite motifs in Nash’s early work. Here the garden is filled with a number of ornamental trees.

Paul Nash is one of the most important artists of the first half of the 20th century. His family were wealthy landowners and farmers from Buckinghamshire. Nash was delighted when the family moved back to the country when he was twelve. This move inspired his interest in the landscape of southern England. He had a deep affinity with certain places and liked landscapes with a sense of ancient history such as burial mounds, Iron Age hill forts and standing stones at Avebury and Stonehenge. Nash created some of the most outstanding landscapes of the period and cleverly combined modernism with a visionary approach to nature and landscape.