The black barn at Bottengoms, Essex, winter

Nash’s Bottengoms studio in Essex looked out towards the barn shown in the present work. Situated just beyond the end of his garden, this barn became a familiar subject in his painting and here, Nash strikingly captures the building in just a few tones of oil paint, while the white ground of the board is left untouched for the surrounding snow and overcast sky. Fascinated with how the colour and light of snow transformed landscapes to become unfamiliar, Nash’s winter scenes are among the most distinctive of his oeuvre. Nash often complained of landscapes being too green during the other seasons, explaining, ‘whenever it snowed, I never wanted to paint it in full sunlight with all those blue shadows. I would wait until the skies had clouded over and the light had become dim. I would then dash out with my sketchbook. That dull light brought out all the colours. Brick walls seemed to glow, the lichen on the trees looked that much richer.’ (J. Nash quoted in A. Lambirth, John Nash: Artist & Countryman, Norwich, 2019, pp. 254-255).

We are very grateful to Andrew Lambirth for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.