Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Although our London exhibition ‘In Air and Fire: War Artists, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz’ is currently closed as part of England's National Lockdown we asked staff and volunteers to voice letter correspondence between Paul Nash, the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and the Air Ministry.
Charting his time in 1940 as the Air Ministry’s Official War Artist, the letters reveal how Nash’s watercolour series ‘Raiders’ and ‘Aerial Creatures’ were enthusiastically received by Sir Kenneth Clark at the WAAC but not by Air Commodore Harald Peake, who terminated Nash’s commission early.
Peake disliked Nash’s imaginative approach and representations of crashed Luftwaffe aircraft, preferring precisely drawn features of the machines in flight. Nash suffered pulmonary problems and died in 1946.
Although our London exhibition ‘In Air and Fire: War Artists, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz’ is currently closed as part of England's National Lockdown we asked staff and volunteers to voice letter correspondence between Paul Nash, the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and the Air Ministry.
Charting his time in 1940 as the Air Ministry’s Official War Artist, the letters reveal how Nash’s watercolour series ‘Raiders’ and ‘Aerial Creatures’ were enthusiastically received by Sir Kenneth Clark at the WAAC but not by Air Commodore Harald Peake, who terminated Nash’s commission early.
Peake disliked Nash’s imaginative approach and representations of crashed Luftwaffe aircraft, preferring precisely drawn features of the machines in flight. Nash suffered pulmonary problems and died in 1946.
