DescriptionNash wrote of this painting: ‘The pale stone sphere on top of the ruined pillar faces its counterpart the moon, cold and pale and solid as stone. No legend or history attaches to such a picture; its drama is inherent in the scene’.This is, actually, a depiction of a gate post and a long avenue of trees which was once intended as entrance to a grand house, abode of the Dormer family, at Ascot Park just outside of the Oxfordshire village of Stadhampton. The house itself burned down, and subsequent attempts to rebuild it failed through lack of funds. Nash’s claim, therefore, that there is ‘no legend or history’ is not strictly true, though ‘drama’, as here depicted, is very much ‘inherent in the scene’.
