John Nash: Artist & Countryman

Description

John Nash (1893-1977) is the quintessential twentieth-century painter of the English countryside. Nash began as a watercolour painter, and the medium remained his mainstay throughout a long career. He also worked regularly in oil paint and was an immensely skilled draughtsman and wood engraver. A dedicated gardener and plantsman, his botanical studies are of real quality. This is the first full-length monograph to deal with all aspects of his career.

Andrew Lambirth (born 1959) is a writer, critic and curator. He has written on art for a number of publications including e Sunday Telegraph, e Art Newspaper and RA, the Royal Academy magazine. Among his many books are monographs on Craigie Aitchison, Maggi Hambling, David Inshaw, LS Lowry and RB Kitaj. He has curated exhibitions of work for various museums and public galleries. He was art critic of e Spectator 2002-2014 and his reviews have been collected in a paperback entitled A is a Critic. He lives in Wiltshire.

"Lambirth is an adroit guide to this particularly English painter whose greatest inspiration was the beguiling if undemonstrative countryside of Suffolk."-- "Sunday Times" "Lambirth, in this well-illustrated monograph, forswears biography and keeps John Nash's art very much to the fore, yet provides a rounded portrait of his life, character and relationships. It is a considerable achievement. . . . In the course of telling us much about Nash's social and artistic world, Lambirth reanimates not only this artist but many others within the history of 20th-century landscape painting. . . . Lambirth revives Nash's stature as an artist. . . . [He] not only successfully integrates Nash's life and art, but he brings to the fore a different set of virtues from those that belonged to his more cerebral and restlessly ambitious older brother."-- "Apollo" "This is a diligent, thoroughly researched account, packed with detail, enlivened by letters and the recollections of Nash's contemporaries. . . . John Nash: Artist and Countryman is valuable for the superb illustrations, beautifully reproduced throughout, and supplemented by a gallery of works that Lambirth found in the course of his research and could not fit into the text, many in private collections."-- "Times Literary Supplement"