Watercolour entitled 'Farm Buildings' by John Northcote Nash. Great Britain, ca. mid 20th century.

A watercolour drawing of a barn with a thatched roof, set in a rolling landscape among trees.

From the Collection of the late Captain Desmond Coke

John Nash, the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash, was self-taught and was encouraged by his brother to develop his natural talents as a draughtsman. He became an official War Artist during the First World War and a major exponent of the revival of wood engraving between the wars. The most fruitful portion of his career was the 1920s, during which the primitivising tendencies of his earlier work combined with ideas being promoted by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury group, resulting in evocative yet tightly constructed landscapes.

John Northcote Nash, the younger brother of the artist Paul Nash, spent much of his life in Essex, and the county's landscapes recur throughout his paintings, drawings and engravings. An Official War Artist during the First World War, Nash developed a primitivising style which was refined in the 1920s by the French-influenced ideas of Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury Group. This watercolour of an Essex farm shows the influence of his brother's work and typifies the evocative landscape style he developed in the interwar years.

P.46-1931