Christopher Wood

Background

Wood was born in Knowsley, United Kingdom, on April 7, 1901. He was the son of Lucius and Clare Wood; his father was a medical doctor who worked as a general practitioner.

Education

At the age of fourteen, during Christopher Wood's school days at Marlborough College, following an accident, while playing football, he contracted septicemia. While recovering from the illness, Wood started to draw, greatly encouraged by his mother.

At first, Wood thought of pursuing a medical career but instead began to study architecture at Liverpool University in 1918. It was there that he met the renowned and successful British painter, Augustus John, and it was said to be John who encouraged Wood to be a painter.

The French collector Alphonse Kahn invited the young aspiring artist to move to Paris in 1920, and Wood left his architectural studies at Liverpool University. There he began to study drawing at the highly reputable Académie Julian (today part of ESAG Penninghen) in 1921. In Paris, he met Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Auric and Serge Diaghilev.

Career

Accompanied by Gandarillas, Wood travelled around Europe and North Africa between 1922 and 1924. His father's medical practice was now based in Broad Chalke in Wiltshire, and it was there that Wood completed his first major works on canvas, including Cottage in Broadchalke, Anemones in a Window, Broadchalke, and The Red Cottage, Broadchalke.

In 1926 Wood received a commission to create designs for Constant Lambert, a young twenty-year-old English composer who had been commissioned to write a ballet for Romeo and Juliet by Serge Diaghilev. However, over a dispute with Diaghilev and Christopher Wood's refusal to compromise, his designs were never used.

Christopher Wood returned to London in 1926 where he met and befriended English painters Ben and Winifred Nicholson. In 1927 Wood exhibited his works alongside the Nicholsons at the prestigious Beaux Arts Gallery in London with noted critical success all around.

It was also in 1927 when Wood was introduced to art collector and enthusiast, Jim Ede, who became his close friend and collector of Christopher Wood's oeuvre. Ede went on to house his great collection of Wood's artworks and that of other St Ives artists, including Ben and Winifred Nicholson, at his famous Kettle's Yard Gallery, now part of the University of Cambridge.

Christopher Wood and the Nicholson went on a painting expedition to Cumberland and to St Ives in 1928. Wood fell in love with the Cornish landscape, and in particular with the fishing village of St Ives. Wood always said that he had Cornish ancestry on his mother's side, so, he believed that he inherited his great and ever enduring love of the sea and of boats from these roots.

In 1929 Wood had a solo show held at the Tooth's Gallery in April of that year. At the private view, he met the collector and gallery owner, Lucy Wertheim. Wertheim collected a number of Wood's artworks and became an important champion of his work in the London art world. For his part Wood apparently appreciated the support, commenting, "I know that my future as a painter from now on will be bound up with your own, and I shall become great through you!"

Wood then spent the rest of 1929 travelling around Brittany. In May 1930, he exhibited his works alongside new work by Ben Nicholson at the Galerie Bernheim in Paris. In spite of a largely unsuccessful exhibition, Wood remained full of energy and immediately following the exhibition went on a second trip to Brittany where he spent the next two months painting prolifically in order to create new works.

In July, Lucy Wertheim travelled to Paris to meet Wood and to choose art pieces for the show that was supposed to be the inaugural exhibition at her new Wertheim Gallery in London due to open in October. While discussing the exhibition over lunch the day after her arrival, Wood issued her with an ultimatum: "I want you to promise to guarantee me twelve hundred pounds a year from the time of my exhibition, one hundred pounds a month being the least I can live on. If I can't have this sum I've made up my mind to shoot myself". When she complained, as the artist asked more money than Wertheim could reasonably provide, he apologized, and they went to review the paintings again. Following his death in August the show was cancelled; it was eventually staged as a memorial show at another gallery.

Achievements

• 

  Christopher Wood was one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. Among his most prominent artworks were Beach Scene with Bathers, Pier and Ships (1925), China Dogs in a St. Ives Window (1926), and Self Portrait (1927).
  
  Nowadays, his artworks are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Constant Lambert

  • Ship in Harbour

  • Fishermen and Boats

  • The Fisherman’s Farewell

  • Le Phare

  • Ulysses and the Sirens (aka Mermaids)

  • Tiger and Arc De Triomphe

  • Church at Tréboul

  • Design for the Cochrane review

  • Buildings at Passy, Pari

  • Design for the Cochrane review

  • Boat in Harbour, Brittany

  • St. Ives

  • Horses in Paris

  • Ship in Harbour

  • Nude with Tulips

  • Pier Hotel, Chelsea

  • Portrait de Max Jacob

  • Landscape with Figures

  • Church and Market, Brittany

  • Landscape at Vence

  • Stage design for Diaghilev's ballet, Romeo and Juliet

  • Self-portrait

  • Allegory

  • Building the Boat, Tréboul

  • Cottages in Cornwall

  • Boy with cat, portrait of fr.Jean Bougoint

  • China dog in a St. Ives window

  • Portrait de Max Jacob

  • Flowers

  • Landscape near Vence

  • Zebra and Parachute

  • Landscape

  • Flowers

  • Nude in a bedroom, portrait of fr. Francis Rose

  • Paris Snow Scene

  • Landscape at Vence - Little White House

  • Girl and Lamp in a Cornish Window

  • A Fishing Boat in Dieppe Harbour

  • Stage design for Diaghilev's ballet, Romeo and Juliet

  • Cumberland Landscape (Northrigg Hill)

  • The Bather

  • Portrait of Gerald Reitlinger

  • Street in Paris

  • Sketchbook

  • Study for ‘Church at Tréboul’

Views

Christopher Wood admired Alfred Wallis whom he met on a trip to St Ives, and whose primitivism greatly influenced Woods' stylistic development. In addition, Wood's style developed under the influence of Pablo Picasso, Theo van Gogh, Henri Rousseau, and Jean Cocteau.

Quotations: "Do you know that all the great modern painters are not trying to see things and paint them through the eyes of a man of forty or fifty or whatever they may be, but through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except the things that would strike him as being the most important? To the childish drawing, they add the beauty and refinement of their own experience - this is the explanation of modern painting."

"I want to paint everything which touches the human being."

"I am not surprised that no one likes [Alfred] Wallis, no one liked Van Gogh for a long time, did they?"

"I seem to live on the edge of the world. But what a world it is, I love this place [St Ives] and could stay here for ever if I had those around me for whom I care."

Membership

Wood became a member of both the London Group, formed in 1913 by artists including Jacob Epstein, Walter Sickert, and Wyndham Lewis, and the Seven and Five Society in 1926. His membership in the London Group was important, not only for the prestige it gave Wood within the London art scene but also for providing the chance of becoming part of an artistic movement, the aim of which was to oppose traditional institutional dominance over art in England.

• 

  London Group , United Kingdom

  1926

• Seven and Five Society , United Kingdom

  1926

Personality

Wood was a rather sensitive person.

Physical Characteristics: During the later years of his life, Christopher Wood began to suffer from acute paranoia and psychosis; he always carried a revolver with him wherever he went. In 1930 the artist travelled to Salisbury to meet his mother and sister for lunch, and to show them his new work. Shortly after saying goodbye he jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station. He died instantly. At his mother's will, Wood's death was reported as an accident. The jury at the inquest, however, brought a verdict of "suicide while of unsound mind."

Wood's fellow painters Ben and Winfred Nicholson were struck by the artist's death and engaged a private detective to piece together the last few days of Wood's life to find out what caused his suicide. When they received the private detective's first report they abandoned their investigation. Shortly after Christopher Wood's death, Ben Nicholson wrote, "When you walk in the country with Christopher Wood, the fields become a much more intense green and in London the buses a much more pungent red... I miss him more than I can say. I could have parted with almost anyone but him."

Most people supposed that opium caused his emotional instability, paranoia and downfall. He once wrote in a letter to Lucy Wertheim, opium is "the only resource of quietness which takes my mind out of that awful turmoil of ideas and colours that go on in my busy head." It is said that just before his death, he had hallucinations and was chased by demons who were following him around. Such negative experiences were the major result of his out of control addiction to opium which ultimately caused agonizing anxiety and in turn, his preference to die rather than to live on.

Interests

• Artists

  Alfred Wallis, Pablo Picasso, Theo van Gogh

Connections

Wood met the Chilean Diplomat, Antonio de Gandarillas, his first male lover, in Paris. Christopher Wood lived with him, and with de Gandarillas he was able to come to terms with his bisexuality. De Gandarillas, himself bisexual, was married, however, he supported Wood financially while Wood went about establishing himself as an artist. Even after their sexual relationship had ended, they remained close friends throughout Wood's life, even surviving his affair with Jeanne Bourgoint.

In 1927 Christopher Wood planned to elope and marry heiress Meraud Guinness, but his intentions were frustrated by her parents. Later on, Wood also had an affair with a Russian émigrée, Frosca Munster, with whom he got acquainted in 1928.

Father:

Lucius Wood

Mother:

Clare Wood

ex-girlfriend:

Jeanne Bourgoint

ex-girlfriend:

Meraud Guinness

Meraud Guinness, also known as Meraud Guevara (1904-1993) was an artist, author and poet, living most of her life in France with her husband, Álvaro Guevara.

ex-girlfriend:

Frosca Munster

Friend:

Antonio de Gandarillas

José Antonio Gandarillas Luco (1839-1913) was a Chilean politician and lawyer.

Friend:

Winifred Nicholson

Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) was a British painter of landscape and still life, often combining the two subjects. She was a representative of the Post-Impressionism art movement.

Friend:

Ben Nicholson

Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was a British artist who stood at the origins of the Abstractionism in England. He was known for the strict geometric compositions including landscapes and still lifes, often made in form of reliefs.

References

• Christopher Wood: St. Ives Artists Book by Virginia Button.
  2004
• Christopher Wood: A Painter Between Two Cornwalls Looking in depth at the artist's life and work in both places, this publication highlights the extent to which his pictures of Cornouaille were imbued with resonances and memories of Cornwall.
  1996
• The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives In The Fatal Englishman, his first work of nonfiction, Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men: Christopher Wood, Richard Hillary, Jeremy Wolfenden.
  1996
• Christopher Wood 1901-1930 Book by Eric Newton.
• Christopher Wood: His life and work Written by Eric Newton.
  1957