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Paul Nash's 'Landscape at Iden'* MARY BEAL 'For the Fallen': Paul Nash's 'Landscape at Iden'* ~E~ a ~?i~" ~~ :4 ~I ~E :.P~s ~,,, c_ 5=-- ~ ~IE~b~L~a t~~S~~~ ~--i_::,~:~.:'-':.:::~::~ 25. Landscapeat Iden,by Paul Nash. 1929. 69.9 by 90.8 cm. (TateGallery, London). PAUL NASH painted Landscapeat Iden(Fig.25) in 1929, a year fence are rows of fruit trees planted as an orchard,bounded in which his sense of mortalityhad been heightened by his on two sides by hedges and a gate. Above the hills in the dis- father'sdeath in February.'In this article I suggest, on the tance six clouds stand out clearly against the blue sky.The basis of the literaryand criticalinfluences informing Nash's scene is earlyspring: the greensof the lawn, orchardand hills work, that Landscapeat Iden should be grouped with the are muted in the pale sunlight,and the young trees are not several works linked to the theme of death which Nash yet in leaf. producedthat year. In their excellent discussionson Landscapeat Iden,Andrew Landscapeat Idendepicts in a schematisedfashion the view Causey3and David Peters Corbett4have both drawn atten- over the Rother Valley towardsthe Isle of Oxney from the tion to Nash's use of accentuatedperspective and the essen- back of OxenbridgeCottage, Iden, near Rye, Sussex,where tially geometric, man-made nature of the subject. Causey Nash and his wife Margaretlived from 1925 to 1930. In the also convincinglyreferred to the work of de Chirico and to centre foregroundof the painting are an upright staff and a diagramfrom a perspectivaltreatise of 1726 by the Abbe a 'trug'containing some logs; to the left standsa wattle fence Dubreuil as importantsources for this work.This articlewill and to the right a large screen of the sort used to protect try to show that literaturewas a third source of inspiration, orchardsfrom frost and wind.2The middle ground is occu- and that the writingsof Nash's long-standingacquaintance, pied by a greattrapezoid-shaped pile of sawn-uplogs in front the poet and art scholarLaurence Binyon (1869-1943)5had of a fence around which is entwined a snake. Behind the an importantinfluence on this composition. *This article is a revised version of a paper given at the conference 'Rethinking were usuallyconstructed in rows from wooden posts and strutscovered in hessian. Englishness:English Art 1880-1914' at the Universityof Yorkin July 1997. The 3CAUSEY, op. cit.at note 1 above,pp.151-54, and p.406, cat. no.637. illustrationsof the worksof Paul Nash and quotationsfrom Paul Nash'swritings are 4D. PETERSCORBETT: 'The Third Factor:Modernity and the AbsentCity in the Work reproducedby permission of the Tate Gallery,London. Books owned by Nash, of Paul Nash', ArtBulletin, LXXIV [1992], pp.470-71; idem:The Modernity of English which are now in the Tate GalleryArchive, are prefixedby TGA followed by the Art1914-30, Manchester[1997], pp.118-19 (see also this issue p.41). Archivereference number. Quotations from the worksof LaurenceBinyon are given 5Nashhad receivedencouragement for his workfrom Binyonwhen as a studenthe by permissionof the Society of Authors,on behalf of the LaurenceBinyon Estate. had been a regularvisitor to the BritishMuseum print room, where Binyonworked IA. CAUSEY: PaulNash, Oxford [1980], pp.170ff.; J. KING:Interior Landscapes: a life of from 1895-1932, becoming deputy keeper of the sub-departmentof orientalprints PaulNash, London [1987], pp. 126-30; M.BEAL: 'Paul Nash's "Eventon the Downs" and drawingsin 1913. ForBinyon's links with Nash, see BEAL,loc. cit. at note 1 above, reconsidered',THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, CXXXI [1989], pp.748-54. pp.748-54; J. HATCHER:Laurence Binyon, Oxford [1995], pp.148, 189, 204, 206, 2These are Sussexreferences. A trugis a 'shallowoblong basketmade of wood strips, 250 and 258. For Binyon'srelationship to artistsin Britain, see D. FRASERJENKINS: with split bark handle and edging, characteristicallymade in Sussex' (ShorterOxford 'Slade School Symbolism', in The Last Romantics:The RomanticTradition in British Dictionary).I am gratefulto the RuralHistory Centre at ReadingUniversity for send- Art,Burne-Jones to StanleySpencer, ed. j. CHRISTIAN,London [1989], pp.71-76; PETERS ing me informationon the use of orchardscreens to protectyoung fruittrees. They CORBETT[1997], op.cit. at note 4 above,pp.26ff. 19 Burlington Magazine is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Burlington Magazine ® www.jstor.org PAUL NASH S 'LANDSCAPE AT IDEN' Tw W-47"PWmpg',''11?,bi significance. 'Iden' means 'The place of the yew tree' - a loc- ation usually associated with graveyards, which as will be seen, is relevant to the subject of this picture. However the name can also be a play on the word 'Eden' and the inclusion of a snake in the garden at Iden is the first hint that this might be a valid interpretation.9 Both Nash and Binyon were deeply interested in the bibli- cal Creation story. Nash had produced a series of woodcuts of the Creation to illustrate the opening chapter of Genesis in 1924,10and according to Margaret Nash, he also knew long passages of Milton's ParadiseLost by heart." Binyon shared Nash's love of Milton's epic. He had written an ode entitled Milton, praising that poet as 'England's voice that rang over Europe',12 and in 1903 he had published a long poem called The Death ofAdam.13 This was strongly influenced by Paradise Lost, which he described as the greatest poem in the world in the lecture he gave on Milton and English landscape in Tokyo in 1929.14Moreover Milton's work had been illustra- ted by William Blake, who as the greatest English artist-poet, 26. The Charles Angelus,etching by WaltnerafterJean-Frangois Millet, published was Nash's hero and equally part of his poetic which by FrancoisLi6nard, Paris. n.d. heritage he felt inspired to depict. Apart from the snake, another clue linking this painting to In the year in which Nash painted Landscapeat Iden,Bin- ParadiseLost is the inclusion of the staff and trug of logs in the yon went on a tour of China andJapan, takingone of Nash's foreground. These were convincingly associated by Causey works with him to be included in an exhibition of English with symbols of male and female from Millet's Angelus water-colourswhich Binyonhelped to arrangeat the Institute (Fig.26)15 - although in the latter the man possesses a digging of Art Researchat Ueno Parkin Tokyo,to coincide with his fork, not a staff, and the woman's basket contains potatoes, highly successfulseries of lectures on English landscape in not logs. The prayer of the Angelus which Millet's French art and poetry,delivered at TokyoImperial University during Catholic peasants are reciting at sunset on the plain of Chailly the middle fortnight of October 1929.6 In the final lecture is said at dawn, noon and dusk to recall the incarnation fol- Binyon describedNash as perhaps one of the most remark- lowing the annunciation of the angel to the Virgin Mary and able of the presentgeneration of purelylandscape painters in to sanctify the different parts of the day. At its heart is the England,adding that Nash had not, he thought, quite found 'Hail Mary'. In ParadiseLost Milton uses the precursor of this his style yet, but that he had 'great sincerity and original salutation when the angel greets Eve in the Garden of Eden vision'.7It was, however,Binyon's original vision and prim- before the Fall with words echoing those of the AveMaria: his book in theFar East in arily Painting which, my view, lay But Eve . on whom the behind at Iden. [ .] Angel 'Hail' Landscape Bestowed - the salutation used after to blest Three editionsof in theFar East were holy long Binyon'sPainting pub- second Eve - in 1913 and 1923 and one of its Mary, lished, 1908, respectively, Mother of whose fruitful womb aims was to artiststo and Hail, mankind, inspireEnglish explore reinterpret Shall fill the world more numerous with sons their own artisticand inheritancein the the thy literary way great Than with the various fruits the trees have orientalmasters had workedwithin and their own heaped upon developed this table.'1 cultural traditions. Although there is nothing particularly oriental about Nash's stylistic approach, the considerable After the Fall, however, the fruits of Eve's womb bring death importancehe attachedto his artisticand literaryinheritance and destruction into the world and, if in Nash's painting in his workis in keepingwith the statedaim of Binyon'sbook. the staff and basket of logs are taken to represent Adam and Indeed, Binyon'sexhortation seems to find an echo in Nash's Eve, the fruits of Eve's womb are the cut-up logs in the basket later statementthat Surrealism- which he relatedclosely to and by extension the great pile of logs behind her and the poetry - was a powerfulmessage to 'live your dreams,open bare fruit trees in the orchard. (The link between the logs your minds, enter your poetic heritage'.8In the case of Land- in the basket and the pile of logs is made particularly clear scapeat Identhe firstclue to the particularpart of the English by the placing of the eccentric triangular 'shadow' between poetic heritageNash had in mind is in the painting'stitle, to these two objects.) Felled trees in Nash's vocabulary often which (as is clear from his other works)Nash attachedgreat represent corpses, so the great wood pile in the picture (akin 6HATCHER,op. cit. at note 5 above, p.250. GalleryArchive, p.3. Nash owned four calf-boundvolumes containingParadise Lost 7R.L.BINYON: Landscape in EnglishArt and Poetry,London [1931], p.285. and ParadiseRegained in an editionpublished in 1757-60. These were in the sale of 8See P.
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