Battle of Britain (painting)

Nonetheless, the Committee earmarked funds to buy further works from Nash, the first of which was Totes Meer, completed in March 1941, and the second was Battle of Britain.

It is not based on a single incident, but rather is an abstracted attempt to symbolically depict the entire conflict between Britain and Nazi Germany, with free-flying British fighters battling ordered ranks of German aircraft.

Nash included several landscape elements present throughout the Battle of Britain: white cumulus clouds above; below, a river meandering through yellowed fields and past a town to the coast; and in the distance, a view across the English Channel to occupied France.

[citation needed] He based the sky on a 19th-century lithograph of a storm over Paris and the Seine, which his wife Margaret gave to his pupil, Richard Seddon.

[citation needed] Nash delivered the painting to the War Artists' Advisory Committee in October 1941, and it was exhibited at the National Gallery, London in January 1942.