This watercolour was probably made en plein air before the subject. The paper was evidently cut down from Nash’s usual small-scale format (7 x 10 inches), with a slight taper to the upper edge of the sheet; this reduction of the picture plane accords with the subject, providing a horizontal emphasis which draws attention to the sloping lines of the furrowed field. As was Nash’s common practice, a few elementary pencil markings were first made to outline the composition: the furrows, trees and clouds received their outlines. Then the watercolours were added. Nash used four or five colours, of which the russet brown is predominant, being used in more or less saturated tones to paint alternating furrows of the field and elements of the treeline. Nash’s watercolour style is highly distinctive and provided the basis for subsequent innovations in watercolour landscape paintings by Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Enid Marx and Edward Burra. In Spring Landscape, the application of watercolours is typically dry; very little use has been made of washes. This allowed Nash to manipulate the paint more easily and to build up a greater level of local detail. It also resulted in a stronger saturation of colour. Amidst the wooded horizon, certain bushes and branches have been given a graphic clarity, with Nash using saturated colour and the tip of the brush to give a vivid evocation of the landscape. These detailed interventions are contrasted with areas of the paper which are entirely unpainted. The artist came to use this strategy of restraint with increasing subtlety through the 1930s, eventually culminating in watercolour landscapes with strikingly fractured compositions. Spring Landscape relates to an entry in Andrew Causey’s catalogue of Nash’s work. A watercolour titled ‘Spring Landscape’ (cat. no. 861) is all but certain to be this work: the measurements are almost identical (a difference of some millimetres), both works were signed with the artist’s monogram, and the work catalogued by Causey is dated to 1935, which agrees with the style of Spring Landscape. Though the work is not illustrated in Causey’s catalogue, it is mentioned that Redfern Gallery included it as an ex-catalogue work for their 1935 exhibition of Nash’s art. The work is signed at lower right using Nash’s distinctive monogrammed signature: a ‘P’ and an ‘N’ are spliced together, encased by a circle that gives this device the appearance of a stamp or hallmark.