Oranges and Lemons

Thomas Saunders Nash 1891 - 1968

Summary

A sunny garden scene depicting children playing 'Oranges and Lemons'. Two older children are joining hands to make an arch while the younger children run through beneath. A small dog joins in to the right, and three older children sit apart in the background to the left. The background is made up of cottages, country lanes and groups of trees, and flowering bushes can be seen in the foreground to the left and right. Thomas Nash trained at the Slade School of Art and won 'First Prize in Drawing and Painting from Life' in 1912. His talent for drawing was 'discovered' when he was in hospital recovering from a serious skating accident. His training at the Slade was paid for by a benefactor, Violet Eustace. Through most of his life, Nash supported himself through teaching and only painted actively during the period 1920-1940. A move to Yorkshire in 1930 with his second wife effectively cut him off from the artistic life of London and the artist friends of his Slade years. Nash's work consisted, in the main, of religious subjects and landscapes with figures. His enduring heroes were the Italian 'primitives', in particular Giotto, Lorenzetti and Fra Angelico.