Dunwich

Nash’s characteristic pattern-making here transforms the shingle into leopard skin with blocks of headland like slabs of cheese above. As the subject is Dunwich, famous for its crumbling cliffs, this soft appearance is apt. In fact, All Saints’ Church had been built altogether too near the eroding cliffs, and between 1904 and 1919, it fell into the sea. The last to collapse was the tower in November 1919, and in Nash’s watercolour it is still in place, adjoined by ruined portions of the church walls. This rare painting of figures in the landscape — Nash tended to keep his figure studies for interiors — also has an undertow of wicked humour in that the bathers appear to be naked, which may account for the fact that the ladies in hats and long dresses would seem to have deliberately turned their backs on such immodesty.

A.L.