John Nash’s Boxted landscape heads to auction in Yorkshire
A mill-pool painting from Humphrey Boyle’s collection brings a Royal Academy exhibition history to Tennants, with an estimate of £30,000-£50,000.
John Nash’s Boxted Mill Pool is coming to auction at Tennants in Leyburn on 3 October, with an estimate of £30,000-£50,000 plus buyer’s premium. The signed oil, from the collection of Humphrey Boyle, founder of the interiors company Zoffany, has an exhibition history reaching back to Nash’s 1967 Royal Academy retrospective.
The painting rewards a longer look than the phrase English landscape might suggest. A strip of reddish earth threads between the trunks on the left; beyond it, the pool opens into a broad, pale surface. The dark trees and their reflections give the scene weight, while the distant bank is picked out in much sharper greens. There are no figures to supply a narrative. The arrangement of land, trees and water does the work.
Tennants places the canvas in Nash’s Bottengoms period of the 1950s, although it supplies no precise painting date. Boxted was a recurring subject: the Government Art Collection holds his watercolour River Stour, Boxted. A local heritage account records that the working mill had been demolished by 1925, leaving outbuildings and water-control structures. This apparently secluded landscape had an industrial history.
The Royal Academy connection gives the picture particular interest. Tennants records it as no. 70 in the 1967 exhibition and also lists its inclusion in the auction house’s 350 Years of British Art exhibition in 2017. Compton Verney returned to Nash’s career in its 2021-22 exhibition The Landscape of Love and Solace, bringing together his work across several media. The present sale offers a chance to look closely at one substantial oil, measuring 66 × 84.5 cm, within that wider career.
The catalogue names Boyle’s collection but does not explain when or from whom he acquired the painting. Its condition report also deserves attention: Tennants notes discoloured varnish, cracking and small paint losses. Those observations are the auction house’s assessment, rather than a conservator’s report. They should temper any assumption that a pleasing catalogue image tells the whole story.
The painting is lot 6 in the Modern & Contemporary Art sale. Viewing is on 1 and 2 October, from 10am to 4pm, and from 8am on sale day.
Sources & further reading
Tennants Auctioneers: John Northcote Nash: After the Shadows of War
Government Art Collection: River Stour, Boxted
Compton Verney: John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace
Boxted Village Website: Boxted bridge heritage account
Goldmark: Boxted Mill Pool, John Nash
Tennants Auctioneers on Instagram: Boxted Mill Pool sale preview reel (Tennants Auctioneers (@tennantsauction), with @tennantsauction_pictures)
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