What begins with an Alphabet chart, shows off some choice Silverware, portrays Queen Victoria, highlights the horrors of World War I and crosses the Ocean? Oh yes, and also includes a Rabbit, the star of a classic children's book. It's the William Nicholson exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. This is the first major show of Nicholson's work for more than 20 years and it covers the full and very varied range of his art -- including landscapes, portraits, posters and book illustrations -- in a career that lasted from the Victorian age until the middle of the 20th century. Among his paintings, though, it's the still lifes, often featuring glittering silver, that stand out. This Silver Casket and Red Leather Box conveys just how skilled he was at rendering materials and reflections. You can marvel at the accuracy of his reproduction of the silver tea caddy as the original is displayed in a glass case alongside. Of course the reflection i...
It's a beguiling, entrancing landscape, yet somehow also very reassuring. The year is 1918, and John Nash is back in England after many months of service on the Western Front in World War I, one of the few survivors from his company. While working by day on paintings to commemorate the conflict as an official war artist, in the evening he's able to leave the memories of the slaughter behind to work for himself, on pictures that purged the horror of the trenches. This is The Cornfield , and it's probably the stand-out painting in a really outstanding exhibition at Towner Eastbourne, John Nash: The Landscapes of Love and Solace , the first retrospective devoted to the life and work of the artist, the less well-known younger brother of Paul Nash, in more than half a century. You can see in this painting a fascination with shapes, patterns and shadows that characterises the best of Nash's landscapes: the angular forms of the row of corn sheaves, their edges highlighted by t...