“A War Artist Without A War”: Paul Nash’s Dymchurch Sketches
Written by: Ben Elliott
Co-curating the Campus Art Exhibition I explored the diverse and little-known University of York art collection. The university art collection began in 1963 with the university’s foundation. Works were purchased to adorn the new colleges, and the vast collection was catalogued with help of the Norman Rea Gallery.
So, you’d be right in thinking that I was surprised to find three lithographic prints of Paul Nash’s more bizarre sketches in the collection. Why collect Paul Nash, an artist inexplicably connected with war, to adorn a new and unashamedly modern university? These sketches are not of the muddy battlefields of France and Belgium as you would expect of Nash, but of Dymchurch – a village on the Kent coast. These three sketches are titled: Sluice, Strange Coast and Tide at Dymchurch.
These three Nash sketches were drawn in 1920, and all narrate the First World War. I had to find out more about these sketches. The year 1920; it followed the First World War, witnessed the Polish-Soviet Russia War and fostered the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles. All in all, 1920 was a year remembered by its upheaval. Conflict had surpassed a world war, a seemingly impossible notion. The British surrealist, First World War veteran and official war artist Paul Nash recognised this. Following the armistice, Nash returned to England. He was disorientated and lost. During the war, his striking oil paintings of the front cemented his position as a foremost painter in Britain, in essence these paintings were bound to his identity.
To name a few, We are Making a New World (1918) is a theatrical and bloody painting which has been hailed as one of the greatest achievements of 20 th century British painting. The scarred landscape in The Menin Road painted in 1919 was a testimony to his war and in turn his artistic success. Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Yet in post-war Britain Nash only had the memories of his war. He branded himself “a war artist without a war”. Of course, Nash could not know of his appointment as an official war artist during the Second World War. If he had, would he have sketched the three Dymchurch sketches in the university collection? If Nash is a war artist without a war to sketch, does he paint a different conflict, and if so, can we relate to it? Why sketch Dymchurch and a coast? Do these three sketches portray a conflict where military service is not a qualification to relate to it? If so, what does this conflict look like? There are a lot of questions we can ask. However, let’s focus on the titles of the three sketches and their deeper meanings. These three works depict a sluice, a strange coast and a tide. A sluice is a sliding mechanism controlling the flow of water, the strange coast.
This three-step, if optimistic timeline of the First World War provided the bedrock to public understanding of the war, simplifying it for the British masses. If we see Nash’s three sketches as an allegory of the First World War is it then beneficial to re-order the series in this timeline, by title?
-Dispute = Strange coast
-Direct action = Tide at Dymchurch
-Solution = Sluice
If Nash meant for the sketches to be read as an allegory of the First World War, then could we read Strange Coast first, Tide at Dymchurch second and finally Sluice. But how can this be? The strangeness of Strange Coast lies within Nash’s littering of coastal erosion preventions be that the razor-straight groins and foreboding sea wall. This sketch illustrates a solution as does Sluice. Despite offering a solution to coastal erosion, Dymchurch’s coast is strange because Nash deems it to be. He sketches the coastal erosion preventions not as benevolent but as a type of conflict steered by aggressive human intervention, possibly even upheaval.
So, can Strange Coast be the last picture in the series? If so, it follows the so-called solution of the sluice. Reading the sketches in this new order the Tide at Dymchurch remains weighted in the middle of the sequence anchoring the narrative; for war always involves direct action. But now, the no-man’s landesque Strange Coast is the last image. This changes the sketches narrative. Now, Nash ends the series with a heavily built-up coastline whose war did not end with the sluice, a device designed to solve water efficiency and flow. Nash is unhappy with the coastal erosion preventions on Dymchurch leading to Strange Coast, which signals that war does not resolve, it lingers. A war’s legacy can according to Nash’s Dymchurch sketches irritate and harm than do good.
What is Nash saying about the aftermath of war, does war ever end in a solution? Is war ongoing like coastal erosion, despite best efforts? We can visit Dymchurch and witness the impacts of coastal erosion. Did Nash want us to see this? Is he commenting on the aftermath of war? Is Nash prescribing a conflict which has very real consequence, in turn defining war for future generations?
If Nash meant for the sketches to be read as an allegory of the First World War, then could we read Strange Coast first, Tide at Dymchurch second and finally Sluice. But how can this be? The strangeness of Strange Coast lies within Nash’s littering of coastal erosion preventions be that the razor-straight groins and foreboding sea wall. This sketch illustrates a solution as does Sluice. Despite offering a solution to coastal erosion, Dymchurch’s coast is strange because Nash deems it to be. He sketches the coastal erosion preventions not as benevolent but as a type of conflict steered by aggressive human intervention, possibly even upheaval. So, can Strange Coast be the last picture in the series? If so, it follows the so-called solution of the sluice.
Reading the sketches in this new order the Tide at Dymchurch remains weighted in the middle of the sequence anchoring the narrative; for war always involves direct action. But now, the no-man’s landesque Strange Coast is the last image. This changes the sketches narrative. Now, Nash ends the series with a heavily built-up coastline whose war did not end with the sluice, a device designed to solve water efficiency and flow. Nash is unhappy with the coastal erosion preventions on Dymchurch leading to Strange Coast, which signals that war does not resolve, it lingers. A war’s legacy can according to Nash’s Dymchurch sketches irritate and harm than do good.
What is Nash saying about the aftermath of war, does war ever end in a solution? Is war ongoing like coastal erosion, despite best efforts? We can visit Dymchurch and witness the impacts of coastal erosion. Did Nash want us to see this? Is he commenting on the aftermath of war? Is Nash prescribing a conflict which has very real consequence, in turn defining war for future generations?