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Nash was proposed as an Admiralty artist in December 1939, along with Eric Ravilious. He was to be appointed for 6 months at a payment of £325, but his start was delayed because of a previous commitment for a poster design for the Ministry of Information.
By late April 1940, Nash was at work in Plymouth, where he saw Kennington. He did not find the surroundings comfortable and commented on the excessive vigilance of the police there. Nevertheless he produced LD 202-207 there. LD 360-383 were submitted in in August 1940 (31).
Nash later worked at the base in Swansea for a while. He complained of loneliness being stuck in a hotel rather than in barracks. In (35) he describes an air-raid which hit his ship one night.
At the end of the official period of his employment, Nash stated that he did not feel he had been working full-time during that period and that his commission should still be active.
It appears that concern was expressed about Nash's depressed state: the Director General of the MoI sent a memo to Clark proposing that Nash should be put on non-war subjects such as agriculture, to ease his melancholy. At this time, Nash was attempting to secure more active work, in the RAF or Royal Marines. He secured a commission as Temporary Captain in the Royal Marines commencing March 1941. (In June that year, the WAAC approved purchase of a drawing of a coastal gun (possibly LD 708). By June, he was at Rosyth in Scotland, and proposed that Ravilious should join him there (which he did - see Ravilious file).
Throughout the file there are discussions of financial matters and expenses, the standard of photographs, and miscellaneous matters including the recommendation for employment of Marion Rivers-Moore, a former pupil of Nash's (19-22), and favourable comments on Ravilious's submarine drawings (40b). He also mentions his brother, Paul Nash, occasionally. His letter at (47) includes a colour drawing of robins as a Christmas card.
The file ends with a letter from W P Mayes, Keeper of Art at the IWM, regarding the question of preparatory drawings for Nash's WAAC work, which should have been submitted to the Committee at the time but was not. Mayes declined to take further of this work.
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