John Nash, brother of the more famous Paul, was born on this day in 1893. His elder brother might have been right to advise him to avoid art school, but it left him with a slightly shaky technique - as a painter; his prints, where his strong sense of design comes into its own, are often more successful. However, John Nash did paint some fine works, which, like his brother's, are firmly in the English romantic pastoral tradition and yet with a jagged modernist edge. Both men's art was shaped by the Great War - they were both war artists, and John was one of only 12 survivors of an 80-man crossing of No Man's Land, near Cambrai - the subject of his most famous painting. The picture above is The Cornfield, the first he completed after his war pictures. There's a rather good poem about it here.
The light coming through the gap in the trees is at a different angle from the light casting the shadows of the stooks. Is this a deeply subtle message or a blunder?
ReplyDeleteIt's a fake ...
ReplyDeleteShaky technique, I fancy...
ReplyDeleteSome folks have suggested that the Apollo moon landings were faked, one piece of evidence being the appearance of non-parallel shadows in the photos.
ReplyDeleteBut "ground slant -- in addition to light source and viewer position -- is an important factor in shadow direction". See the second item on http://www.iangoddard.com/moon01.htm.