Description
Object description
Image: a devastated landscape, pocked with rain-filled shell-holes. A shattered tree stands to the right, the tree and the
whole foreground dominated by a dense web of barbed wire. The sky is a dramatic contrast between white and purplish red coloured clouds.
Physical description
Framed watercolour painting.
Label
Correspondence in the Imperial War Museum between Nash and the Ministry of Information reveal that the picture was substantially complete towards the end of 1918 and that Nash planned, but did not execute, a lithograph from the design (IWM War Artists Archive: IWM WW1 267A-6).
Label
The Art of Protest
The First World War was fought on a scale not seen before. It involved the mobilisation of whole societies and fighting that caused unprecedented levels of casualties and destruction. For all those who experienced it, the war was a life-changing event.
This was reflected in art and literature produced by artists and writers who experienced the war at first hand. The shattered landscapes and bodies shown in works by artists such as Paul Nash and C R W Nevinson created a haunting vision of what the war represented. Writers including Siegfried Sassoon and Max Plowman protested, through their actions and in their prose and poetry, about what they had seen.
The war, and this vision of it, cast a huge shadow over the intervening years. The 'war to end all wars' initiated a number of peace organisations that grew in popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.
Label
Paul Nash, Wire (1918)
Paul Nash experienced the Western Front as a soldier and as an official war artist. His art has been hugely influential in the perception of the First World War.
The nightmarish vision of the Western Front presented here reflected Nash's increasing anger at the destruction he witnessed. Nash encapsulated this in a letter to his wife Margaret in 1917:
"It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless. I am no longer an artist interested [and] curious, I am a messenger who will bring back word from men fighting to those who want the war to go on forever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls".
History note
Ministry of Information commission, Scheme 2. Commission administration transferred to Imperial War
Museum
Inscription
Paul Nash 1918 1919
