Signed l.l.: Paul Nash and inscribed with colour notes

Lightly squared for transfer

Watercolour over pencil and black crayon, 17.5 by 25 cm (7 by 9 ¾ ins)

Provenance: with the Redfern Gallery in 1935 where acquired by Thomas Barnard

Exhibited: the Redfern Gallery, Paul Nash, April 1935, no.38

Literature: Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980, p.435, no.870

Although Causey (op cit) dates the present watercolour to 1935, it can be assumed that this was transcribed from Nash’s 1935 Redfern Exhibition (where it was shown as no.38) rather than from any first-hand inspection. The watercolour is evidently the full compositional study for Nash’s painting Whiteleaf Cross (now in the Whitworth, Manchester (no.1979.2)). That painting dates from 1932 and is possibly the artist’s best-known view of a corner of Buckinghamshire that he began painting just after the end of the First World War. It was a place of great and enduring significance for both Paul Nash and his brother John.