Paul Nash (1899 - 1946) was a British war artist.

He was the son of a successful lawyer and was born London on May 11, 1899. Nash was educated at St. Paul's School and the Slade School of Art (unlike his younger brother John, who became an artist without formal training). There he met Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, William Roberts and C. R. W. Nevinson. Influenced by the work of William Blake, Nash had one-man shows in 1912 and 1913.

At the outbreak of World War I, Nash enlisted in the Artists' Rifles and was sent to the Western Front. Nash, who took part in the offensive at Ypres, had reached the rank of lieutenant in the Hampshire Regiment by 1916. Whenever possible, Nash made sketches of life in the trenches. In May, 1917 he was invalided home after a non-military accident. While recuperating in London, Nash worked from his sketches to produce a series of war paintings. This work was well-received when exhibited later that year.

As a result of this exhibition, Charles Masterman, head of the government's War Propaganda Bureau (WPB) recruited Nash as a war artist. In November 1917 he returned to the Western Front where he painted several more pictures. Nash's work during the war included The Menin Road, The Ypres Salient at Night, The Mule Track, A Howitzer Firing, Ruined Country and Spring in the Trenches.

Nash disliked his work as a member of War Propaganda Bureau. He wrote at the time: "I am no longer an artist. I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth and may it burn their lousy souls."

Nash was also a pioneer of modernism in Britain, promoting the avant-garde European styles of abstraction and Surrealism in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1933 he co-founded the influential modern art movement Unit One with fellow artists Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and the critic Herbert Read. It was a short-lived but important move towards the revitalisation of English art in the inter-war period.

Nash, found much inspiration in the English landscape, particularly landscapes with a sense of ancient history, such as burial mounds, Iron Age hill forts and the standing stones at Avebury and Stonehenge.

During World War II Nash was employed by the Ministry of Information and the Air Ministry and paintings produced by him during this period include the Battle of Britain and Totes Meer.

Paul Nash died on July 11, 1946, at Boscombe, Hampshire.