Paul Nash, one of the most important British landscape painters of the twentieth century, is best known for his images of ruined battlefields. He served on the Western Front in 1917 and was then sent back as an official war artist, producing around fifty drawings of mud and shattered trenches that became the basis for later paintings. In the Second World War he was appointed a salaried war artist attached to the Royal Air Force, and his work grew increasingly abstract. He died in 1946 of heart failure brought on by asthma. His paintings show war as something that flattened the landscape itself.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.