John Armstrong was born in 1893 in Hastings. He studied at St. John’s College, Oxford, 1912-13, and then at St. John’s Wood School of Art 1913-14. During the war he served in the Royal Field Artillery 1914-19, before briefly returning to St. John’s Wood School. He began his professional career as a theatre designer in London, gaining important patrons including Lillian and Samuel Courtauld, who commissioned Armstrong to decorate a room in their Portman Square home. His first solo exhibition was at the Leicester Galleries in 1928. In 1933 he joined Unit One alongside Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Edward Burra, Henry Moore, Edward Wadsworth, John Bigge and Barbara Hepworth, with whom he exhibited at the Unit One exhibition. From the early 1930s onwards his work became Surrealist in style – uncanny, romantically dream-like and heavily imbued with symbolism. Armstrong died in 1973. His work is held in numerous international public collections including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, and the National Galleries of Scotland. John Armstrong rarely painted figures, let alone nudes, so this painting, one of a pair, is a particularly unusual work within his oeuvre. In this work Armstrong paints his first wife, Benita Armstrong, from behind. Benita was a formative figure in Armstrong's early career. As the best friend of Elsa Lanchester, Hollywood star, founder of the cabaret club 'The Cave of Harmony' and wife of Charles Laughton, Benita was Armstrong's route into the society circles in London. Benita was a former lover of Clive Bell and later the wife of Lord Russell Strauss, the long-standing Labour MP. After their separation in 1938 and Armstrong's subsequent move to Lamorna, Cornwall to be with his second wife Veronica Sibthorp, Armstrong remained great friends with Benita, staying at her flat when he was in London. It was during one of these trips that Armstrong painted this and its pair, a view of Benita from the front. The pair were painted as part of a commission, hence the unusual genre compared to Armstrong's output of the period. Painted on an intimate scale, Armstrong delights in painting different textures in 'Nude'. Benita is positioned amongst various curtains, throws, sheets, and cushions. Brush strokes vary across the work - the crumpled sheets on the floor are painted loosely, whilst the furniture behind is painted with a smooth undercoat in one colour with small dashes of another colour overlaid on top. The flesh of the nude is worked in detail - a multitude of layers of touches of pinks, peaches and reds combine to give a certain sculptural solidity to the body. Benita's hair is piled onto her head allowing an uninterrupted view of the form of her body. The focus of the painting is on the patterning of the back, the groove of the spine and the slight tautness of the muscles in the twisting pose. Personal, intimate, romantic yet domestic, 'Nude' is a testament to the life-long friendship between John and Benita, and Armstrong's accomplished contribution to the genre of the nude.