Thomas Saunders Nash (1891-1968)

Nash’s style is closely associated with his exact Slade contemporary and hero Stanley Spencer. Like the work of both Spencer (particularly his early work) and his brother Gilbert (with whom Nash briefly shared lodgings) his primary influences were the Italian primitives, particularly Giotto. Something of Giotto’s purity is evident in Nash’s work - always inventive in composition and frequently tackling highly dramatic religious subject matter. Nash exhibited widely particularly at the New English Art Club and was represented by the Redfern Gallery, who gave him his first one-man show in 1926 and exhibited over 150 of his pictures. The Contemporary Art Society acquired two of his works in the early 1930s for the collections of the Harrogate Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  A major retrospective of his work was held at the Reading Museum and Art Gallery in 1980.