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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

We Are Making a New World

painting by Paul Nash

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ20087529 ↗
Source-derived summary

We Are Making a New World is an oil-on-canvas painting by Paul Nash, from 1918. It is held at the Imperial War Museum, in London.

History and description

The optimistic title contrasts with Nash's depiction of a scarred landscape created by a battle of the First World War, with shell-holes, mounds of earth, and leafless tree trunks. Nash's first major painting and his most famous work, it has been described as one of the best British paintings of the 20th century, and compared to Picasso's Guernica. "Yet it is worth remembering that the picture was a piece of official art and that it first appeared, untitled, as the cover of an issue of British War Artists at the Front, published by Country Life.

... [It] was promulgated in 1917 as covert propaganda for the Allied cause."

Among the first oil paintings produced by Nash, the work was based on his 1918 pen-and-ink drawing Sunrise, Inverness Copse, which depicts the remains of a small group of trees at Inverness Copse, near Ypres in Belgium. Both works were exhibited in a solo exhibition entitled "The Void of War" at the Leicester Galleries in May 1918.

Nash enlisted shortly after the outbreak of the First World War with the Artists' Rifles; after transferring to the Hampshire Regiment, he was sent to the front at Ypres. His passionate attachment to the natural world caused him to regard with horror the deformation brought about by the war.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “We Are Making a New World” as painting by Paul Nash. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1918, 1917—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1918. The account is most persuasive where Making, World and painting can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as painting by Paul Nash. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20087529. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918 and 1917.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “We Are Making a New World”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow We Are Making a New World primary sources, We Are Making a New World archive and Making research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “We Are Making a New World”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “We Are Making a New World” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.