The Clare Neilson Collection

Clare Neilson was a lifelong friend and collector of Nash who visited the family home of Madams near Gloucester. Neilson bequeathed much of the collection to her godson Jeremy Greenwood who in turn gave it to Pallant House Gallery, supplemented by books and wood-engravings collected by himself and his partner Alan Swerdlow.

Clare Neilson met Paul Nash in the early 1930s, establishing an close friendship that was to last until Paul’s death in 1946. The wealthy daughter of a stockbroker, Clare had settled in Kent with her husband Charles in 1930 where she formed a wide circle of artist friends, which included Edward Burra and Paul Nash who lived in the neighbouring town of Rye. Clare and Paul shared a love of book collecting, and the collection includes examples of Nash’s most important illustrated books, many of which are personally inscribed by Nash, as well as a group of early wood engravings of the 1920s that demonstrate Nash’s significance as a printmaker.

After the Neilsons moved to Gloucestershire in 1937, Paul Nash was a frequent visitor to their home, Madams, and the standing stone at Staunton in the Forest of Dean and gnarled fallen trees known as the ‘Monster Field’ nearby provided subjects for some of the artist’s best known works. Their friendship was recorded not only in Nash’s artworks and their extensive correspondence, but in photographs recording their picnics, excursions and even Nash’s role in designing their garden.