A major retrospective of British artist Paul Nash has recently opened at the Tate Britain in London and four of Nash’s artworks from the British Council Collection are on loan to this exhibition, alongside one of our sculptures by Henry Moore.

One of Nash’s works on view at Tate, Landscape of the Megaliths, was in fact the third work that the British Council acquired for our Collection, which now encompasses over 8,500 art works.

So we thought that this would be a fitting occasion to share some insight into our archive. As you can see from the accession card (that’s the image of an old, tea-stain colour, handwritten receipt on the right), it was Clive Bell and Herbert Read, two significant figures in the art world at the time and members of our Fine Arts Advisory Committee, who recommended that we buy Landscape of the Megaliths.

Clive Bell (1881–1964) was an art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group, the husband of another British Council Collection artist Vanessa Bell and the brother in law of Virginia Woolf.

Sir Herbert Read (1893 – 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, and a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.

Inspired by the megaliths at Avebury in England, Nash painted this stone circle from memory while recovering from bronchitis in France in 1933. This oil on canvas perfectly demonstrates Nash’s fascination with Britain’s ancient past, whilst also showing the influences of abstract and surrealist styles on his work.

The British Council Collection began in 1938 and Landscape of the Megaliths was the third to be formally registered in the Collection. Since then, the British Council has enabled these megaliths to travel to over 25 countries around the world, including Japan, New Zealand and Uganda.

“Nash had the gentleness of expression which is traditionally Anglo-Saxon, but he was so informed of things of the spirit and so sure in his mental processes that to see a roomful of his work is to have one’s artistic longings fulfilled,” reported the Toronto Globe in 1949 on the occasion of a major tour of Nash’s work around Canada organised by the British Council.

See which British Council Collection works are on view at Paul Nash’s Tate Britain exhibition

Look at all 19 works by Nash in the British Council Collection