We Are Making a New World

The optimistic title contrasts with Nash's depiction of a scarred landscape created by a battle of the First World War, with shell-holes, mounds of earth, and leafless tree trunks.

[1] "Yet it is worth remembering that the picture was a piece of official art and that it first appeared, untitled, as the cover of an issue of British War Artists at the Front, published by Country Life.

Nash lobbied the Foreign Office to be allowed to return to the front as an official war artist.

He wrote to his wife Margaret : "I am no longer an artist...I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever..."[5] The painting measures 71.1 by 91.4 centimetres (28.0 in × 36.0 in).

It depicts a bright white sun rising above ruddy brown clouds, shining beams onto a desolated green landscape below, with unnatural mounds of earth piled up between the skeletal remains of blasted trees.