Convolvulus is a quietly rhythmical and thought-provoking work. The arched rhythms of the composition are a continuation of a theme that had begun to emerge in Nash’s work from the beginning of the 1920's. In wood-engravings such as Winter Wood, Hampden (1922) and paintings like The Avenue, Savernake Forest (1925), processions of towering tree trunks are enclosed by arching branches high above. These tunnel-like pathways through forests and woodland become increasingly abstracted - the arches becoming luminous areas of colour over a light framework of pencil drawing. In 1929, Paul Nash took the title Coronilla from a poem(1) of the same name, written by his friend Harold Monro(2) in 1917, and created a painting which juxtaposes the natural tendril forms of the clinging weed of the pea family (coronilla or crown vetch) within an architectural setting. Here he echoes the imagery of the poem, in which the twining flower and the femme fatale within a room combine to lure a man to his death.(3) The next year this image becomes more stylised in a woodcut, Coronilla 2. Although these compositions seem to lead up to Convolvulus, in fact the composition for the arches had been the subject of an oil sketch by Nash which he had painted in Paris in 1925. (Paul Nash, Arches (study) squared for transfer, oil and pencil on canvas, signed with monogram, inscribed Paris and dated 1925 (The Leicester Galleries, 1991, purchased from a private collection, London). Both Coronilla and Convolvulus bring together Nash’s exploration into the abstraction of metaphysical and poetic ideas. In the same year that he painted Convolvulus, Nash had visited Paris with Edward Burra to view contemporary art, in particular abstraction. The mixture of late Cubist Abstract, Metaphysical and Surrealist pictures made a huge impression on them both: We went to Leonce Rosenberg, Burra explained in a letter to a friend; Such a show my dear of Metzinger Chirico Gino Severini Herbin Ozenfant and others (Max Ernst) all very abstract I’ve never seen such a beautiful show for years.(4) During the same trip, Nash and Burra visited the mirrored dining room at the Hotel du Port et des Négociants in Toulon, which was almost certainly another inspiration for both Coronilla 2 and Convolvulus and explains the Mayor Gallery’s alternative title, Mirrored Hall. The hall re-emerges once again in a very different and less organic form four years later in Voyages of the Moon. Capturing an infinite repetition of reflections, the hall plays upon Nash’s new concept of abstraction and pattern, however the use of mirrored surfaces reflecting spaces beyond the sight of the viewer is a motif that appears earlier in works such as Mirror and Window of 1924. The dressing table mirror presents an abstracted view of part of the room in opposition to the pastoral landscape seen through the window. The plant convolvulus, or bindweed as it is commonly known, appears as a theme several times during the years 1929-1932. For example, Nash’s frontispiece of 1929 for the poem Dark Weeping (by ‘AE’, George William Russell, the Irish poet and artist) repeats the theme of a falling male figure and a convolvulus. The convolvulus also appears among his thirty illustrations for Cassell and Co’s 1932 reprint of Sir Thomas Browne’s 17th century alchemical work, Urne Burial and The Garden of Cyrus of 1658. Traditionally, bindweed carries many different symbolic associations. Most poignant of these to Nash was that it follows the motions of the sun, itself an emblem of life, energy and an important element of British visionary painting. Thomas Browne’s text reads: the great Convolvulus or white-flower’d Bindweed observes both motions of the Sunne, while the flower twists acquinoctionally from the left hand to the right, according to the daily revolution; the stalk twineth ecliptically from the right to the left, according to the annual conversion. Coronilla by Harold Munro, 1917 Coronilla! Coronilla! Heavy yellow tepid bloom: (Midnight in a scented room)- Coronilla. Southern road; muffled house… Later on tonight I’ll come again so quietly By moonlight. Oh, what is that I think I see So pale beyond the yellow dusk, Beyond the trailing bitter flower And reek of marrow-bone and musk? Is it a face?- My frozen hands Are hiding in their bone: The stare above the little mouth; And she and I alone. She calls me. Oh, I wonder why. She wants me. Shall I go? Now is your time, my brain, to cry The often-practised No Coronilla, I have passed you Seven times a day. Why do I always take my walk The southern way? Although I hate your bitter reek; I still return, and still Long that your hidden voice may speak Against my wavering will. Wait for me. I will come tomorrow. Must you have your way? Wait, then; I will come tomorrow. I am going home today. Coronilla! Coronilla! Are you here tonight? Seven times I’ve come to you By moonlight. Now I must feel your tepid bloom. I’ll twist your tendrils through my skin; So, if you have a shuttered room, Coronilla, let me in. He cooled the hollow of his cheek, And filled it with the drowsy flower. He has become so gentle, weak, And feverish in her power. Now all the sappy little leaves Are clinging to his frozen lips; And she has drawn the shutter back, And drawn him with her finger-tips. The candles flicker in the room. He trembles by the wall. She gave him all and all again, But still he asks for all. So one by one the candles droop And close their eyes and faint away. The yellow blooms begin to stoop; He has not noticed it is day. Now he has laid his body down, And all his skin is silver pale; He’ll never, never rise again: His muscles have begun to fail. He’s covered with a winding sheet. There’s yet a little time to rave, Then he will hear the grains of earth Drip-dropping on his grave Yellow, yellow is the flower; Fatal is the bloom; And no one any time returned Who slept inside the shuttered room. 1. Strange Meetings. A book of Poems by Harold Munro, The Poetry Book Shop, London 1917. Republished that year and 1921. 2. Harold Munro was born in Brussels in 1879. He was the publisher of various anthologies of Georgian Poetry. He described himself as "author, publisher, editor and book-seller." Monro founded “The Poetry Bookshop” (visited many times by Wilfred Owen) in London in 1912 3. Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, page 179 4. Letter from Edward Burra to William Chappell, March-April, 1930, quoted in Edward Burra, Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1973, pages 87-88