The works of British war artist Paul Nash is are a reminder of the cost of conflict, writes Lucy Hammonds, of Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
About 100 years ago the realities of World War 1 had truly set in.
The casualty count was mounting, the horrors of Gallipoli were becoming clear, and people across the globe were struggling to come to grips with what might lie ahead.
It wouldn't be long before soldier-artists returned home from battle, and artworks responding to the war made their way on to gallery walls.
Paul Nash's Mudheaps after Shelling (1917-18), on exhibition as part of ''Parallel Play'' at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, is a haunting, angry, and searingly modern depiction of the Western Front.
One of Britain's most celebrated war artists, Nash offers us no triumphant soldiers; no glory, no victory, no jaunty optimism.
Instead, he presents a ravaged landscape: a muddy, destroyed environment that conveys the bitterness and futility he felt on the front line.
Nash, who went on to become one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century, studied at the Slade School of Art in London in 1910.
He focused particularly on landscape painting and embraced avant-garde ideas.
In 1914, Nash enlisted in the Artist's Rifles, and was sent to the Western Front in February 1917.
Always attached to the environment, the war-torn landscape left a strong impression on Nash.
After exhibiting his works back in London, he returned to Ypres in November 1917 as an official war artist.
His subsequent artworks chart a mounting sense of disillusionment.
Mudheaps after Shelling, which was donated to the collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1955, anticipates Nash's memorable oil painting We are Making a New World (1918).
In both works the bleak, scarred landscape stands as a challenge to the ambitions of war-makers and a reminder of the cost of conflict.
• ''Cool and Collected'' runs fortnightly in The Weekend Mix, sharing stories from the collections of Otago Museum, Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Olveston.
