Sunrise, Inverness Copse
1918
Paul Nash didn't just paint a landscape; he painted a nightmare. In 1918, serving as an official war artist during World War I, he visited Inverness Copse in Belgium and found a forest so destroyed by artillery that the trees looked like 'monstrous' black skeletons. This painting shows those shattered trunks reaching for a pale, eerie sun that barely pierces the gloom of the churned-up mud. Instead of a peaceful sunrise, we see a wasteland of craters, a stark modernist statement against the horrors of the Battle of Passchendaele.
Location: Imperial War Museum, London
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