A landscape of love and solace
IT has taken a long time for John Nash to emerge fully from his brother’s shadow. The younger sibling of Paul has for years suffered from younger-brother syndrome, as did his contemporary Gilbert Spencer, Stanley’s brother. Comparisons are inevitable and, in the Arts particularly, make it hard to follow in the wake of an older, better-known sibling.
The differences between the Nashes were far greater than any similarities. Paul was an ambitious international Modernist and John, despite being born in London’s Earl’s Court, was a low-key English countryman whose interests were music, gardening, fishing and painting—roughly in that order. The ever percipient Walter Sickert put his finger unerringly on the characteristics that differentiated them, describing Paul as having his poet’s ‘head in the clouds’ and
