The Artist At War

The brutality of World War I appalled most who were caught up in it. One British volunteer was Paul Nash, a young painter who before the conflict produced gentle, wispy landscapes that recalled English visionaries like Samuel Palmer. After his appointment as an official war artist, though, Nash abandoned pastoral scenes for shocking indictments of trench warfare. Viewers can marvel at these apocalyptic paintings, along with Nash's more serene vistas from the interwar years and his work from World War II, at the U.K.'s Tate Liverpool until Oct. 19. He has been "too long overlooked," says curator Jemima Montagu, as an...