Having served as a war artist in the First World War, Paul Nash
was once again commissioned to be an official war artist at the beginning
of the Second World War and this time he was seconded to the Air Ministry.
He set about recording a war where the landscape was dominated not by
men, but by machines in the air.
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Nash's greatest masterpiece is called Totes Meer - a
German title which means Dead Sea. It shows us an ocean of shot-down German
planes and he painted it after visiting a huge dump for wrecked Nazi aircraft
that would never fly again.
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Like the artist JMW Turner before him, Nash seemed to
recognize that the sea was the most powerful symbol of the British character.
His Totes Meer is a powerful national symbol of victory over fascism that
draws on our deeply ingrained love of the landscape.
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Nash said of his time as a war artist: "I have never before had such a
stimulating adventure as an artist, yet all this time I have not once
flown in an aeroplane. I wish I was able to fly and explore the mysterious
domain of the air."
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Ironically, Nash's chronic asthma meant that his lifelong ambition of
flight would never be physically realised.
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