Andy Friend joined us to discuss his new book John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace. Drawing on extensive research and beautifully illustrated, this biography is a comprehensive picture of John Nash’s life and art, and offers a compelling narrative, embracing both love and tragedy. It is the first biography to draw on John Nash’s wife, Christine Kuhlenthal’s, journals and Andy Friend gives us an opportunity to glimpse their world not only through John Nash’s ‘delighted eye’, but through Christine’s too.

John Nash painted extensively in our area from his home in Wormingford, just over the River Stour in Essex, and his intimate relationship with the natural world is evident in his paintings, cover designs, drawings, etchings and wood engravings. He became a member of the Royal Academy and recorded both world wars through paintings which have become iconic.

John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace, is published in association with the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne where, from 1 May, 2021 -26 September 2021, there will be a major retrospective exhibition of the work of John Nash and his many contemporaries featured in this book, including Cedric Morris, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, who was at the centre of Andy Friend’s previous work: Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship.