Arcadia is an area of Greece that is traditionally associated with an unspoilt rural paradise. In this print, Finlay draws an ironic parallel between this idea of a natural paradise and the camouflage patterns on a tank. There is also an echo of the Latin phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ (‘I too was in Arcadia’), used by the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin in a painting of a group of shepherds discovering a tomb. Like Poussin, Finlay reminds us that death is present everywhere, even in paradise.





![Ian Hamilton Finlay Arcadia [collaboration with George Oliver] 1973](/collection/P/P07/P07025_8.jpg)