There\u2019s a bit of a hidden treasure, if not quite on my doorstep, then only an hour\u2019s drive away towards the Cotswolds. Compton Verney is an historic manor and parish, with a Grade-I listed country house, redesigned by Robert Adam in the 1760s and landscaped by Capability Brown in 1768. The tiny parish was 119 souls in the 2011 census, and for one reason or another, the manor house has not been lived in since WWII. By the 1980s it was almost derelict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is now a glorious, up-to-date art gallery, thanks to the generosity of the Peter Moores Foundation, with six permanent collections, and loan exhibitions supported by the amazing Garfield Weston Foundation and the Art Fund. The current displays are \u201cGrinling Gibbons: Centuries in the Making\u201d by the greatest British carver, and \u201cJohn Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace,\u201d the last of which is on from 23 October to 23 January 2022. Don\u2019t miss the V&A\u2019s loan of Gibbon\u2019s intricately worked limewood cravat, which Sir Horace Walpole was said actually to have worn when greeting visitors to Strawberry Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The John Nash show has less obvious attractions. The younger brother (1894-1977) of the painter and early Surrealist Paul Nash (1889-1946), John Nash is represented here by a few paintings \u2013 some his best, such as \u201cOver the Top\u201d (1918, loaned by the Imperial War Museum) and \u201cThe Cornfield\u201d (1918, Tate) \u2013 watercolour landscapes, botanical illustrations, wood engravings and lithographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having lived and worked for so long, John Nash, perhaps not surprisingly, served as a War Artist in both Wars. The First was, for him, the grimmer, as \u201cOver the Top\u201d depicts a British counterattack during the Battle of Cambrai when, of the 80 men in his company, 68 were wounded or killed in the first few minutes, and Nash was one of only twelve who survived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a young man he was at the Slade with the painter Carrington, and one of the many of his coevals who were in love with the charismatic woman who herself loved only Lytton Strachey, and killed herself rather than live after Strachey\u2019s death. Depression seems to me to loom over much of John Nash\u2019s own work. The Nash sons\u2019 mother had such bad depression that she was institutionalised, and John seems to have suffered from the Black Dog to the point where, as in \u201cThe Cornfield,\u201d shadows always intervene on otherwise sunny scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the whole I am more impressed and touched by his smaller botanical works and the masterful wood-engravings in the exhibition, than by the selection of paintings and watercolours exhibited. But this show does give you a rare chance to see a sampling of the whole career of a versatile and fruitful 20th<\/sup> century artist. As we left, my wife bought a present for me from the splendid Compton Verney gift shop \u2013 ten postcards featuring Nash\u2019s wood engravings for his 1927 series of \u201cPoisonous Plants\u201d \u2013 sinister and wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a bit of a hidden treasure, if not quite on my doorstep, then only an hour\u2019s drive away towards the Cotswolds. Compton Verney is an historic manor and parish, with a Grade-I listed country house, redesigned by Robert Adam in the 1760s and landscaped by Capability Brown in 1768. The tiny parish was 119 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[4732,4729,4735,4726,4727,4731,4733,4734,4736,4730,4728],"class_list":{"0":"post-1894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"tag-art-fund","9":"tag-capability-brown","10":"tag-carrington","11":"tag-cotswolds","12":"tag-crompton-verney","13":"tag-garfield-weston-foundation","14":"tag-grinling-gibbons","15":"tag-john-nash","16":"tag-lytton-strachey","17":"tag-peter-moores-foundation","18":"tag-robert-adam","19":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-uy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1895,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}