Paul Nash studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Slade. He fought in World War I, but after being wounded at Ypres he became an official war artist.
He gained early recognition as a landscape artist and became a member of several influential groups. In the 1930s he was drawn to Surrealism and founded the group Unit One in 1933, exhibiting at the International Surrealist Exhibitions in 1936 and 1938.
He also designed textiles, book jackets, theatre sets and ceramics and wrote The Shell Guide to Dorset in 1936. He produced landscapes influenced by burial mounds and stones in fields. He died of pneumonia in 1946 not long after the end of WWII.