i8 
LANU tV WATER 
Juv.o. 28, 191 7 
The Ypres Salient 
Tl 1 1: Yprcs Salient may well be called the mo^t famous 
iKiltU-ground from a British point of view of all the 
lighting' area in France and Belgium. It is certamly 
the most detested. Never a f-ood word is siv)ken of 
it by any whose duty it has been to occui>y its miry trenches 
during all the montlls it has existed, which now almost total 
tlirce years. Its desolate wastes have been the scene of the 
most "heroic fighting; its sodden soil the grave of many 
brave men. In a sense, the Ypres Salient has ceased ; 
for, since the battle of Wvtschaete Ridge, the actual salient 
has disappeared, but the trenches are still there and the 
fighting continues as persistently as e%'er. Lieutenant Paul 
Nash, one of the younger artists of the London School, has 
done well to inmiortalisc these wastes of- battle while war 
still rages over them, and his exhibition of water-colour draw- 
ing's (four of which are reproduced here and on the opposite 
page) at the C.oupil t.alleries. 5, Kegeiit Street, will attract 
on aca)unt both of the subjects of his drawings and of the 
manner in which they arc portrayed. . , , , 
ilr Nash, whose work was favourably known before the 
war. originally joined the Artists Kifles, and subsequently 
received a commission in the Hami>shirc Regiment. He 
Las been many months at 
the Front, and as his friend 
m. John Cournos, mentions r^^^ZikZ^^'^mT^- 
in the appreciation pub- f ' '^ ■ • - 
• lished below, not a few of 
his pictures were drawn 
under shell fire. The work 
is veiy fine, and every one 
of the pictures leave a cleep 
impression, for it is obvious 
the artist has realised to 
the full the beauty and the 
tragedy of the scenes he 
depicts. There are two 
views of the front line at 
St. Floi, two of Voormc- 
zcele ; the Wytschacte Ridge 
appears, and, though it ha,s 
no direct connection with 
• the Salient, yet for many it 
has been the prelude to 
that unsavoury region ; the 
Seine at Rouen is also the 
subject of a- drawing. This 
little exhibition is one of 
the most interesting of 
which the war has been 
the direct cause. 
It is to be hoped that 
some attempt is being 
made by the authorities to 
form a permanent collection 
either at the Tate Gallery 
or elsewhere, of the more 
famous ])icturcs of the 
battlefields and trenches 
the work of younj^ combatant officers. Beyond (luestioii, 
the righting man, who may at any moment be tailed 
on " to go over the "top," does finer and mote efiettive 
work than the civilian-artist who pays occasional brief visits 
to the firing line. Living with his men in these " unhealthy " 
places ; . exposed to danger at every hour of the day and 
night, tiie mind constantly on the alert, the surroundings 
inevitably cut deeper into the nature of a soldier who is 
also a clever artist, and give to all his work a strengtii 
and sincerity which must be absent from the paintings of 
thr- casual observer. Mr. Nash and other combatant olhccrs 
should be given every opportunity to visit all parts of 
the line. We leave the merits of " these drawings to Mr. 
Cournos to discuss ; he writes as follows : 
• * • • « 
" Lieutenant Paul Nash's drawings from the front, some of 
them done under shell fire, reveal an invagination which 
uses reality only as material subject to its will and does 
not make of reality a fetish in itself. His intimate and 
orderly vision sees "life as a kind of decoration, not less 
deep or solid because of the fantasy with which it is 
invested. This curious blend of vision and reality the 
artist displayed even Ix-fore the war, but the present draw- 
ings show a marked advance in spontaneity, 
"This artist's natural expression is landscape, preferably 
with trees, and the beautiful thing about his art is that each 
tree is drawn with an eye to its distinct individuality and 
architecture, as though it were in fact a hnmHn being. There 
is more than a touch of tnc Fast and of Eastern mysticism 
in this solicitude for trees, and this solicitude naturally deter- 
mines the 'firm bounding line ' that BLike s]Haks of; 
trees en tiuisse. blended by light or mist into indi-terminate 
mountain-like sha!)es, hardly interest him; consciously or 
unconsciously, he achieves the general through the particular, 
which is another Blakian secret. It is a method that belongs 
more to the East than to the West ; we have only to compare 
a wave bv Turner and a wave by Hokusai, and a landscajx- by 
Cotman and a landscape bv Hirishigi, to mark the antithesis. 
Lieutenant Nash appears to have come by this vigorously 
decorative note in his art quite honestly— that is, naturally. 
He is moved by a genuine nostalgia for a world of tranquil 
appearances. 
■ To have achieved this tranquil world in one's art under 
conditions so violent and distressing as those which prevail 
in the warfare in France is surely a tribute to the artist's 
spiritual integrity, which refuses to compromise with a world 
of transient facts and wrests therefrom the moment that is 
eternal. In a drawing like ' Chaos Dccoratif/ which is 
reproduced on the opposite page, we see an eloquent example 
which delines this attitude. The very title is suggestive 
of it. Chaos and decoration 
are superficially a contra-" 
diction, yet all art, like 
the creation of a w-orld, 
starts essentially from chaos. 
Faced with this chaos, one 
artist will endeavour to 
select and arrange the more 
susceptible part?, another 
will endeavour to detect 
and visualise the qualities 
of structure and order 
existing in chaos itself. 
Thus, if an artist set out to 
])aint a picture which he 
called ' Confusion,' he 
would still have to present 
the 'subject with greatest 
possible order : that is, 
he would have to follow 
all the inevitable laws of 
artistic composition. 'Chaos 
Decoratif,' though on a 
small scale, belongs to this 
la^t category. Consider the 
subject; broken and 
wounded trees, which had 
suffered hardly less than 
human beings in the Almost 
unceasing bombardment in 
Ypres salient. Think how 
Dor6 would have treated it 
as a tortured, hellish thing, 
in a mood of , strained 
macabre ! But Mr. Nash's 
own peculiar fantasy, de- . 
tachcd from all transient sentiment, saw in it first of all its 
harmonious arrangement of colour and line, for his is cssen- 
t ially a painter's, not an illustrator's vision. Unfortunately, a 
black and white reproduction tloes not do full justice to the 
original, in which colour and line arc blended into an appear- 
ance of beauty as abstract and as melodious as a musical 
theme. It would be interesting to see how far the artist can 
sustain a similar effort (m a larger scale. 
•• Somo one has described a certain poet's work as possessing 
the quality of ' accurate mystery,' that is mystery expressed 
with precision, for in many people's minds the idea of mystery 
is not dissociated from vagueness and mistiness. ' It is this 
growing tendency towards precision that is perhaps the most 
valuable quality in Mr. Nash's method. He draws reality, 
he draws accurately what he sees, yet what he sees is not 
what the cam.'ra sees. His drawing of ' The Front Line. 
Evening,' (which appears on this page) is a case in point. 
It is to all appearance an accurate drawing of a trench, 
but if you liad put the figures of Dante and Virgil in it, 
and called it the ' (iate \o Hell,' the appropriateness of 
the title could not be questioned. With all its accuracy^ 
it/is as mystical as a drawing by Blake. 
" Naturally the scene of war offers many opportunities for 
the Dantesque and the macabre, but whether the subject of 
this note is one or the other or purely deccrativ<', one quality 
appK^ars never to desert him : his tranquillity and aloofness of 
vision. .\nd that surely is no small triumph of the spirit 
over matter." 
The Front Line, Evening 
' 
