Gordon Bottomley was not only a friend but an important early mentor for Nash. Bottomley was a poet, dramatist and art collector who suffered from ill health throughout his life. He lived in Silverdale, Lancashire. Nash’s love of poetry and Bottomley’s extensive knowledge of painting brought the two men together in 1910. Bottomley praised and encouraged the young Nash and in exchange Nash made several designs for Bottomley’s plays that he exhibited or used as illustrations. Despite increasingly divergent tastes in art, their friendship survived. Nash gave Bottomley an unrivalled collection of his early watercolours and drawings, including a number of major early landscapes, which are now in the Tullie House collection.
Head of Gordon Bottomley 1922 by Paul Nash (1889-1946). Ink and wash
In this ink and wash portrait, the sitter Gordon Bottomley is approaching middle age, and shows his head and neck only, facing left, his gaze directed in front of him. He wears a collar and tie and is drawn against a plain cross-hatched blue background.
This is one of two portraits of Bottomley by Nash in the collection. The earlier portrait was completed in 1912 when Bottomley was suffering from a recurrent health problem. This portrait did not portray Bottomley in the best of health and he was not fond of it. Ten years later Nash completed this portrait of Bottomley which he drew from a photograph rather than life. It is extremely rare for Nash to draw figures as life drawing was never his strong point and figures seldom feature in his work, this example perhaps being a testament to the men's friendship.
Nash became one of the most evocative painters of the British landscape of the twentieth-century. Along with artists such as Eric Ravilious, Graham Sutherland and John Piper, Nash sought to reconcile, in his words, ‘Going Modern’ with ‘Being British.’
There are these inscriptions on the exhibit:
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery collection, gift of Mrs Margaret Nash 1960
Image © Tate, London, 2010
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