Nash, Paul 1889-1946
English painter

Born in London, he became an official war artist in 1917 (remembered particularly for his poignant Menin Road, 1919). Developing a style which reduced form to bare essentials without losing the identity of the subject, he won renown as a landscape painter and also practised scene painting, commercial design and book illustration. For a while he taught at the Royal College of Art. Experiments in a near abstract manner were followed by a phase of Surrealism until, in 1939, he again filled the role of war artist, this time for the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Information, producing such pictures as Battle of Britain and Totes Meer. Shortly before his death he turned to a very individual style of flower painting. His autobiography, Outline, was posthumously published in 1949.