Ruin in the Forest of Dean depicts a derelict ivy-shrouded building, caught between a tree in the foreground and a deep expanse of hills, sky, and clouds beyond to the right. There is a strong compositional contrast between the tree and the ruin, set in a markedly shallow area of space, and the landscape which stretches far away into the distance. The formality of the composition and the localised areas of saturated blue and yellow, non-naturalistic in emphasis, indicate that this work was not studied from life but rather from photographs taken by Nash some years earlier (fig. 1).

The industry of iron and steel works in the Forest of Dean sprang up in the eighteenth century, flowered in the nineteenth, and was largely derelict and buried by the early twentieth. By the time of his first visit, Nash discovered in the Forest of Dean a rich assortment of ruins which fed his poetic and historical imagination. He photographed some of these in 1938 on his first visit to Madams, the nearby Gloucestershire home of his friends Charles and Clare Neilson. In Ruins in the Forest of Dean, the architectural remains do not serve the traditional function of ruins in the picturesque mode; they are more than a pleasing enrichment of the view. Rather, throughout his career, Nash invested ruins with an arresting presence of their own. They carry a suggestion of history, and they evoke in visual terms the long interaction between nature and humankind which underpin the landscape such as it is. That interaction was one of the enduring thematic interests of Nash’s career.
The same photograph which Nash used as the compositional basis for this watercolour was also used in a small collage of circa 1938 (fig. 2). It was made as a gift for his friend Clare Neilson. The photograph is otherwise unaltered but for the addition of a tiger, a colour engraving, which Nash pasted into the foreground; it appears to be slinking away into the ruin. Nash wrote in a letter to Neilson: ‘I am sure nothing would be less surprising in that queer part of the world than that a tiger should come out of the forest and eat his way through a stone wall.’ To Nash and his circle, the Forest of Dean was a place of hidden mysteries and imaginative fancy. It provided the inspiration for photography, collage and watercolour – media which seamlessly articulate the artist’s sophisticated understanding of the English landscape.

Shortly after it was painted, this work was acquired by Dudley Tooth. From 1938 until his death, Nash’s sole art dealer was Arthur Tooth & Son (Arthur was Dudley’s father). He had previously sold his work in solo exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries and in between exhibitions at Redfern Gallery. However, in an undated letter Nash explained to Redfern’s director Rex Nan Kivell why he preferred to sell his work elsewhere instead:

After careful consideration I came to the conclusion that Tooth's possessed the necessary machinery for solving my problems which involved not only a centralized selling organisation but a relief for me from the whole worrying business of trying to market my own work. This of course is particularly necessary if I am to be out of England for long periods in the future. Last week I approached Tooth's and we had a comprehensive talk the result of which is that I propose to make them, for the time being, my sole agents.

This letter provides a telling insight into Nash’s financial situation and his relationship with Tooth’s. The market for contemporary art in London in the 1930s was badly suppressed; few modern artists lived comfortably at the time and few galleries specialised exclusively in modern art. The security and continuity offered by Tooth’s relieved Nash of the continual burden he felt to sell and promote his work. Ruin in the Forest of Dean was one of several works which Dudley Tooth bought from Nash for his own collection. It was never exhibited publicly during the artist’s lifetime and has for many decades been privately owned by Tooth’s descendants.