Paul Nash

After leaving the Slade in 1911, Paul Nash was indulging in a bout of emotional enthusiasm for Blake and Rossetti’s poetry, complemented by a visionary pictorial inspiration which drew him into the countryside to draw. Realising that William Blake Richmond was the only living artist with direct personal roots in the ‘Ancients’, he asked if he could pay a visit to Beavor Lodge in Hammersmith. This he did on a Sunday morning in 1912, when Nash recorded his initial impression of his host:

“Certainly Blake might have had, as it were, a spiritual hand in his making. He was not unlike the ancient, vigorous old men in the designs. [Nash had attended St Paul’s School at Colet Court, where he erroneously believed that Richmond had executed mosaics of Milton, Pepys, Marlborough etc.] He was in a bad temper that morning. Probably he did not want to be bothered with me, and he had cut his finger, which prevented him from playing Bach, a Sunday morning recreation. He looked at my drawings and I was studying him as he did so.... As a mentor, Sir William was wise and kind. He had a booming Blake-like voice, but inadequate control of the letter R. Nearly all our interviews ended in the same way, Wemember my boy, dwawing, dwawing, dwawing always dwawing. Next Nash took such drawings as Visions at Evening and Falling Stars to Beavor Lodge, which Richmond studied with growing interest. Suddenly he said: ‘My boy, you should go in for Nature.’

“When next I took my drawings to Sir William Richmond he was obviously interested in what I showed him. Bending over them he emitted an astonished grunt and then in a gentle roar he exclaimed — ‘These are something new!’ I was surprised at so much enthusiasm. I could not make out just what quality excited the old man. But he was not inclined to be expansive and urged me to go away and do some more.

Little could Nash know what winds of distant memory must have blown through Richmond’s mind on seeing the first faltering designs of the Neo-Romantics. This was Shoreham reborn, images from Blake, Palmer and Calvert, newly created by the uncertain hand of a twenty-three-year-old youth in 1912.

“After a month’s work I presented myself once more at Beavor Lodge and spread out my drawings [which probably included The Field before the Wood, The House among Queer Trees, Spring at Hawk’s Wood and The Windy Trees] for Sir William’s verdict, which I felt a would this time be decisive, so far as I was concerned. He gave it immediately. ‘I knew it’ he exclaimed in a rousing bellow and, striking his thigh with a sharp report, ‘I thought I was right but I feared it might be some phantasmagorriwia of the Brrwain!’ Whatever it was, and I was by no means clear about that, I could not help feeling greatly elated by Willy’s enthusiasm, and determined to take advantage of this warm expression, if I were given an opportunity. I heard him muttering — ‘Not a bit like those damn Post-Impressionists!’ ‘I will do what I can for you’, he assured me, ‘meanwhile go on with your drawing and come and see me again.”

After another month he found Richmond abroad in Assisi till the autumn of 1913. It was the end of October before Richmond returned from Italy. Nash took round about twenty drawings which met with Richmond’s approval and spurred him to promise to help with getting them exhibited.

Excerpt from William Blake Richmond, An Artist’s Life, 1842 - 1921, by Simon Reynolds, published 1995

Mornington Crescent