In six weeks on the Western Front, Nash completed what he called "fifty drawings of muddy places".
When he returned to England, he started to develop these drawings into finished pieces and began working flat-out to have enough pictures ready for a one-man show in May 1918.
While in Flanders Nash had mostly worked in pen-and-ink, often over painted in watercolours, but in England he learnt, from Nevinson, to produce lithographs.
The 1917 drawing Nightfall, Zillebecke District showing soldiers walking along a zig-zagging duckboard became the 1918 lithograph Rain.
After the Battle shows a battlefield, deserted save for some corpses sinking into the mud.
The Landscape – Hill 60 shows fields of mud and shellholes with explosions filling the sky above.
One of the largest and most powerful new drawings was Wire, originally titled Wire-The Hindenburg Line and again uses the destruction of nature, in the form of a tree trunk wrapped in barbed wire, akin to a crown of thorns, to represent the catastrophe of war.

Early in 1918, Nash began working in oils for the first time.
The first oil painting he made was The Mule Track in which, amidst explosions from a bombardment, are the tiny figures of soldiers trying to stop their pack animals charging away along another zig-zagging duckboard.
Switching to oils allowed Nash to make far greater use of colour and the explosions in The Mule Track contain yellow, orange and mustard shades.
The canvas The Ypres Salient at Night captures the disorientation caused by the changes in direction of the defensive trenches at the Front, which Nash would have been familiar with, and which was exacerbated at night by the constant explosion of shells and flares.

Whilst in France Nash had made a pen-and-ink drawing he called Sunrise, Inverness Copse.
Inverness Copse was the site of heavy fighting in the summer of 1917 during the Battle of Langemarck, part of the Third Battle of Ypres and Nash depicts the aftermath of the fighting, showing a landscape consisting of mud and blasted trees illuminated by a pale yellow Sun.
Early in 1918, when Nash decided to produce a larger oil painting based on this drawing, whatever little hope that pale Sun represented had vanished.
The bitter title, We are Making a New World, clearly mocks the ambitions of the war but is also a more universal reference than the previous title and represents a scene of devastation that could be anywhere on the Western Front.
There are no people in the picture nor any of the details of, for example, The Mule Track to distract from the broken tree stumps, shellholes and mounds of earth.
The Sun is a cold white orb and the brown clouds of the original drawing have become blood red.
One modern critic, writing in 1994, likened it to a 'nuclear winter' whilst one of the first people to see it in 1918, Arthur Lee, the official censor responsible for the British war artists, thought it was a 'joke' at the expense of the public and the art establishment.

These new works, alongside the 1917 pieces and some other works such as Mackerel Sky, were exhibited in Nash's solo exhibition entitled The Void of War at the Leicester Galleries in May 1918.
This exhibition was critically acclaimed with most commentators focusing on how Nash had portrayed nature, in the form of devastated woods, fields and hillsides, as the innocent victim of the war.
In six weeks on the Western Front, Nash completed what he called "fifty drawings of muddy places". When he returned to England, he started to develop these drawings into finished pieces and began working flat-out to have enough pictures ready for a one-man show in May 1918. While in Flanders Nash had mostly worked in pen-and-ink, often over painted in watercolours, but in England he learnt, from Nevinson, to produce lithographs. The 1917 drawing Nightfall, Zillebecke District showing soldiers walking along a zig-zagging duckboard became the 1918 lithograph Rain. After the Battle shows a battlefield, deserted save for some corpses sinking into the mud. The Landscape – Hill 60 shows fields of mud and shellholes with explosions filling the sky above. One of the largest and most powerful new drawings was Wire, originally titled Wire-The Hindenburg Line and again uses the destruction of nature, in the form of a tree trunk wrapped in barbed wire, akin to a crown of thorns, to represent the catastrophe of war.
Early in 1918, Nash began working in oils for the first time. The first oil painting he made was The Mule Track in which, amidst explosions from a bombardment, are the tiny figures of soldiers trying to stop their pack animals charging away along another zig-zagging duckboard. Switching to oils allowed Nash to make far greater use of colour and the explosions in The Mule Track contain yellow, orange and mustard shades. The canvas The Ypres Salient at Night captures the disorientation caused by the changes in direction of the defensive trenches at the Front, which Nash would have been familiar with, and which was exacerbated at night by the constant explosion of shells and flares.
Whilst in France Nash had made a pen-and-ink drawing he called Sunrise, Inverness Copse. Inverness Copse was the site of heavy fighting in the summer of 1917 during the Battle of Langemarck, part of the Third Battle of Ypres and Nash depicts the aftermath of the fighting, showing a landscape consisting of mud and blasted trees illuminated by a pale yellow Sun. Early in 1918, when Nash decided to produce a larger oil painting based on this drawing, whatever little hope that pale Sun represented had vanished. The bitter title, We are Making a New World, clearly mocks the ambitions of the war but is also a more universal reference than the previous title and represents a scene of devastation that could be anywhere on the Western Front. There are no people in the picture nor any of the details of, for example, The Mule Track to distract from the broken tree stumps, shellholes and mounds of earth. The Sun is a cold white orb and the brown clouds of the original drawing have become blood red. One modern critic, writing in 1994, likened it to a 'nuclear winter' whilst one of the first people to see it in 1918, Arthur Lee, the official censor responsible for the British war artists, thought it was a 'joke' at the expense of the public and the art establishment.
These new works, alongside the 1917 pieces and some other works such as Mackerel Sky, were exhibited in Nash's solo exhibition entitled The Void of War at the Leicester Galleries in May 1918. This exhibition was critically acclaimed with most commentators focusing on how Nash had portrayed nature, in the form of devastated woods, fields and hillsides, as the innocent victim of the war.
Paul Nash (artist)