Moonlight Voyage: Hampden Flying Above the Clouds by Paul Nash, lithograph on paper

This lithograph was published by the National Gallery and the Ministry of Information after an original watercolour by Paul Nash from his series ‘Aerial Creatures’, commissioned through the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) for the Air Ministry in 1940.

In this series of works, Nash developed ideas about the ‘personalities of planes', suggesting that machines – aircraft – were the ‘real protagonists’ of the war. Later, in an essay on the subject, he equated the Hampden bomber, often used at night, with a pterodactyl ascending into the sunset. Nash's imaginative outlook dissatisfied the Air Ministry, which preferred subjects that specifically celebrated the RAF, and it terminated Nash’s contract. Subsequently he received Ministry of Information commissions under Sir Kenneth Clark, Chairman of the WAAC, who also helped arrange the publication of this lithograph. 'You can only find the equivalent of the Hampden Bomber in the mists of pre-history. It is plainly some kind of pterodactyl. It has something of the reptilic and yet - apart from being a plane - it is a creature of the skies. I love it because it is a devil. It sets out across the darkling fields soaring into the dusk with its great satanic nose snuffling the upper air. Presently the moon rises, and there goes the flying lizard, gliding across the cloud edge, its pale eyes flickering in the lunar ray. Flying against Germany' - Paul Nash, 'The Personality of Planes' (Vogue magazine, March 1942). Purchased in 1984. Artist copyright: Crown (expired). Image copyright: RAF Museum.