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signed and dated 1922

pen and black ink and watercolour

PROVENANCE

Mrs Charles Grey (probably acquired directly from the Artist)
Private Collection, by descent from the above
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 13th March 1974, lot 88 (as 'Dymchurch')
The Fine Art Society, London, whence purchased by the present owner, March 1978 (as 'The Platform, Dymchurch').
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Oxford, 1980, no. 346 (as 'Coast Scene');
Leonard Robinson, Paul Nash: Winter Sea - The Development of an Image, William Sessions, York 1997, pp.68-71, pl.23, illustrated (as 'Coast Scene, Dymchurch').
CATALOGUE NOTE

Nash first visited Dymchurch in 1919, but in 1920 he and his wife Margaret moved away from London to this small town on the Kent coast. Some speculation exists as to why they chose this comparatively isolated spot, but it seems to have been a combination of finance, a rumoured indiscretion on Nash's part, and the presence of a small circle of arts-minded people. Of these, the Nashes struck up a particular friendship with Claude and Grace Lovat Fraser. A talented theatre designer, Claude Lovat Fraser's early death in 1921 hit Nash hard.

This stretch of the Kent coast is very flat and relatively featureless and the main feature is the long sea wall that runs along the gentle sweep of the bay. Whilst the local transport connections brought large numbers of weekend visitors in season, it was quiet much of the time. Nash was clearly still much troubled by his war experiences and coupled with a deep-seated childhood fear of the sea, Dymchurch seems to be an unlikely spot to choose to recuperate. However, they settled in and his work progressed well. The conflict between land and sea seemed to fascinate Nash, and the monolithic landmarks of the Napoleonic Martello tower and the WWI blockhouse on this stretch of coast feature in many of the works he produced during his time there.

From the beginning, the paintings have a haunted quality, the emptiness of the vast curves of beach and the concrete sea wall receding into the distance helping to create a mood of tension. Figures rarely appear, and when they do, they are mysterious and otherworldly. The sea wall and the coastal defences appear as bulwarks of defence against the attack of the sea. Interestingly, this sense of threat is much less evident in Nash's contemporary work produced away from Dymchurch, which is remarkably consistent in its tone and seems to draw strongly on Cezanne. There was clearly something about this particular place that moved him, in the way that Iver Heath had affected his pre-WWI work, but the differences between the Dymchurch work and his contemporary output suggests that at Dymchurch, Nash was working towards finding a personal form of modernism that would give him the kind of acclaim his WWI paintings had brought. Of the oil paintings produced at Dymchurch, the present work is closest to The Shore (Coll. Leeds City Art Galleries) of 1923, one of the finest works he produced there that perfectly balances the concerns of landscape and abstraction with which Nash was clearly wrestling.

The original owner of Coast Scene at Dymchurch was Mrs Cecily Grey, a noted collector who knew the Nashes through his brother John. She owned a number of works by Nash, including the important Winter Sea which she donated to York City Art Gallery in 1956.