Paul Nash

(British, 1889-1946)

Study for 'Nest of Wild Stones' 13.8 x 22.8 cm. (5 1/2 x 9 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired by
E.L.T. Mesens, thence by descent
With R.A. Gekoski Books and Manuscripts, London
With Piano Nobile, London (as Landscape with Eggs)
With Abbot and Holder, London (as Flint and Eggs)
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, R.A. Gekoski Books and Manuscripts, cat.no.26 (catalogue untraced)

The present work relates to the assemblage, The Nest of the Wild Stones, a group of four flints arranged by Nash and exhibited at the London Gallery's 1937 exhibition Surrealist Objects and Poems. Nash produced another related watercolour of the same title and date now in the collection of the Arts Council. Like the present work, the composition depicts an arrangement of flints and egg forms, the Arts Council's version set within a sweeping landscape. For the present work, the setting is more ambiguous, but a sense of 'ground' and 'sky' is unmistakable.

Nash contributed a chapter to the anthology The Painter's Object (1937, edited by Myfanwy Evans and published by Gerald Howe Ltd) titled The Nest of the Wild Stones which details his discovery of the concept and which includes the note 'I have taken the elements that go to make my nest of wild stones: earth, air, and hard, cold stone. But of the nest itself, what is there to tell? My first looked like a sheet of squared paper with a torn edge, stretched across a barren field'. This description so closely matches the present work, which is dedicated by Nash to E.L.T Messens, that they could quite plausibly be one and the same.