Christopher Wood (painter)

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Self-portrait, 1927

John Christopher Wood (born April 7, 1901 in Knowley, Lancashire , † August 21, 1930 in Salisbury ), also called Kit Wood , was an English painter. He was a member of the London Seven and Five Society around the painter Ben Nicholson .

Life

Childhood and youth

Christopher Wood was born in Liverpool to a doctor. His mother comes from a family that provided a number of admirals for the Navy. As a teenager he was injured playing soccer and contracted sepsis . During the long recovery period, his mother encouraged him to draw and paint watercolors. He attended Marlborough College from 1914 and Malvern College from 1918 . After finishing school he studied architecture at Liverpool University in 1919/1920 .

In Paris

In 1920 he gave up his studies and went to London, where he met the French art collector Alphonse Kahn. Kahn, who lived in a luxurious apartment in Paris on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne , invited him to Paris, where Wood studied drawing at the Académie Julian from 1921 . Kahn arranged for him to have a studio in Paris and introduced him to a mixed society of rich, hedonistic, and rather unbridled idlers. Through him, Wood quickly gained access to French artistic circles. He met the Chilean diplomat Antonio de Gandarillas (1839–1913), who became his first patron. Gandarillas was a Cambridge graduate, gamer, drinker, and gourmet. Wood came to opium through him . Gandarillas made him u. a. with Picasso , Jean Cocteau , with whom he worked temporarily in the same studio, and with Georges Auric . He returned to London accompanied by Gandarillas. There he met Ivor Novello and the painter Álvaro Guevara (1995–1951).

Travel in Europe

He made his first trip to the continent in the summer of 1921 in the company of an English couple. It took him to Florence and Riva , where he met the Russian painter Michael Sévier (* 1886). Sévier gave him his first lessons in oil painting. In the summer of 1922 he traveled with Ganderillas to Tunisia, Taormina, Athens and Constantinople, where they suddenly got caught in the fighting between Greek and Turkish troops. Then they returned to Paris via Venice, Nuremberg and Karlsbad, where both were treated for their malaria , where Ganderillas found him an apartment on Rue Balzac. From then on, Woods studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière .

The Russian ballet improviser Diaghilew , for whom u. a. Henri Matisse , Georges Braque , Picasso , Fernand Léger and Jean Cocteau designed figurines and stage sets and showed interest in working with Wood. In 1926, Wood designed sets for Diaghilev's production of the ballet Romeo and Juliet by Constant Lambert , but these were eventually discarded by Diaghilew. In the same year he returned to London and became a member of the London Group, which organized exhibitions of contemporary British painters. From 1926 to 1930 he was a member of the Seven and Five Society around the artist couple Ben and Winifred Nicholson. In 1927 he had his first joint exhibition with the Nicholsons in London's Beaux Arts Gallery, one of the most renowned galleries for avant-garde art up until the 1960s. In the same year Nicholson introduced him to the art collector Jim Ede (1895-1990), who put on an extensive collection of the artists of St. Ives artists in his home in Cambridge . Ede later donated his collection, including 25 paintings and drawings by Wood, to the Kettle's Yard Gallery at Cambridge University.

Alfred Wallis: St Ives, around 1928
Christopher Wood: Porthmeor beach, at St Ives, 1928

In the summer of 1928 he had a violent affair with Meraud Guinness, painter and member of the Guinnes family, which he modeled several times. The couple wanted to get married, a so-called "kidnapping" failed, and the relationship fell apart. In 1929 Meraud married the painter Álvaro Guevara. In the fall of 1928 he traveled to Cumberland and Cornwall with the Nicholsons . In St Ives they met the painter Alfred Wallis , and Woods lived near him for a few months. Wallis' "primitive-naive" style of painting influenced Christopher Wood's own style and was decisive for Wood's artistic development. In the same year he met the Russian émigré Frosca Muster in Paris. A love relationship developed between Wood and Frosca, who was married, accompanied by an intensive correspondence that lasted until Wood's death.

In 1929 he had a solo exhibition at Tooth's Gallery in 1929, where he met gallery owner Lucy Wertheim, who from then on became his most consistent patron. The Wertheim Gallery planned another solo exhibition for the end of 1930. His last pictures were created around this time, including “Zebra and Parachute” and “Tiger and Arc de Triomphe”, which in their proximity to Surrealism differ significantly from his previous painterly work and could indicate a turning point in his development. Possibly as a result of paranoia caused by years of opium and drug abuse, he threw himself in front of a train on the return journey to France on August 21, 1930 at Salisbury station.

Christopher Wood was buried in the All Saints Churchyard in Salisbury. The tomb was created by the English sculptor Eric Gill .

plant

Wood has left an extensive work behind considering his short life. At the London retrospective in 1938, the Burlington Gallery showed around 500 paintings and 400 watercolors and drawings.

Christopher Wood at the art market

Since the turn of the millennium, paintings by Christopher Wood have achieved prices in the five to six-figure range ( English pounds ) at auctions . In 2009 the painting “The Card Players” (1922) was sold at Sotheby's for £ 121,250 with an estimated price of £ 50,000. The record price for a painting by Christopher Woods was £ 340,000 for the painting “Treboul Harbor” until the beginning of 2017, achieved in June 2003 at Sotheby's and only surpassed in 2017 with “Beach Scene with Bathers, Pier and Ships” (1925) at Christie's auctioned for £ 365,000.

His drawings and watercolors trade in the £ 1,000-8,000 range (as of 2019). Pen-and-ink drawing on paper, Reclining Figures, grossed £ 12,500 in 2018. The highest price at auction to date for a drawing by Christopher Woods reached in 2016 “Study of a Reclining Female Nude” (1928) from the David Bowie collection and is £ 27,500, with an estimated price of £ 1,200 / 1,800

Exhibitions

  • 1919: Solo Exhibition Tooth's Gallery
  • 1931: Wertheim Gallery
  • 1932: Lefevre Galleries
  • 1938: Eric Newton, Christopher Wood. Exhibition of complete work. Redfern Gallery, London
  • 1938: Complete Works. New Burlington Galleries, London
  • 1938: Christopher Wood memorial exhibition, Liverpool
  • 1969: Christopher Wood 1901-1930. An Exhibition of Drawings. Maltzahn Gallery, London (catalog)
  • 1990: Christopher Wood: The Last Years 1928-1930. Kettle's Yard, Cambridge 1990 (catalog).
  • 1996: Christopher Wood. A Painter between Two Cornwalls. Tate Gallery Saint Ives, Cornwall; Musée des Beaux Arts, Quimper.
  • 2004: Christopher Wood. Between Poetry and Art. Graves Art Gallery Sheffield
  • 2016: Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive. Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, West Sussex (catalog)

Pictures by Christopher Wood can be found below. a. in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Tate Gallery in London and were shown in the British Pavilion at the 1936 Venice Biennale . He was also involved in several group exhibitions, including a. in the National Gallery (1940), the Royal Scottish Academy (1956), the Hayward Gallery in London (1980) and the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe , Japan (1989).

Archives

Letters, documents, photographs and sketchbooks from Christopher Wood are in the archives of the Tate Gallery and Cambridge University: Kettle's Yard Museum and Art Gallery .

Letters

  • Christopher Wood: Dear Winifred. Letters to Winifred and Ben Nicholson. 1926-1930. Samson, Bristol 2013.

literature

  • Eric Newton (Ed.): Christopher Wood 1901-1930. Heinemann, London 1938.
  • Richard Ingleby: Christopher Wood. To English Painter. Allison & Busby, London 1995, ISBN 0-7490-0263-8 .
  • James Beechy: Christopher Wood 1901-1930. Paintings and Drawings . Michael Parkin Gallery 1996.
  • Sebastian Faulks: The Fatal Englishman. Vintage, London 1997, pp. 1-114.
  • Katie Norris: Christopher Wood. Sophisticated primitive. Exhibition catalog. Palliant House Gallery, Chichester 2015, ISBN 978-1-84822-186-4 .
  • Michael Bird: The St Ives Artists. A Biography of Place and Time. Lund Humphries, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-84822-185-7 .

Web links

Commons : Christopher Wood  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tate.The Seven and Five Society , accessed on February 13 of 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c d Christopher Wood. Tate, Exhibitions and Events, accessed February 16, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c Gregory Woods: Homintern. How Gay Liberated the Modern World. New Haven, London: Yale Univ. Press 2016, p. 95ff.
  4. ^ Sebastian Faulks: The Fatal Englishman. Lonon: Vintage 1997, p. 12.
  5. ↑ Christopher Wood. Stage design for Diaghilev's ballet, Romeo and Juliet, 1925 Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge, accessed February 16, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b Wood, English Painter The Art Story, accessed February 20, 2019
  7. ^ Wertheim Gallery , accessed on February 19, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b Alice Sanger: Christopher Wood. Zebra and Parachute, 1930 Tate, December 2010, accessed February 18, 2019.
  9. ↑ Christopher "Kit" Wood Findagrave, accessed February 18, 2019.
  10. ^ Nytimes.com New York Times, September 8, 2016, accessed February 13, 2019.
  11. ↑ Sotheby’s November 11, 2009, accessed February 11, 2019.
  12. ↑ Francis Allitt: Christopher Wood painting takes £ 220,000 at Chorley’s Antiques Trade Gazette, November 23, 2016, accessed February 12, 2019.
  13. ↑ Chriestie's Sale 13295, Lot 18
  14. ↑ Christopher Wood, Auction Price Results Invaluable, accessed February 12, 2019.
  15. ↑ Chriestie's Sale 15480, Lot 150
  16. ^ Sotheby's, Bowie Collection , accessed February 16, 2019.
  17. ↑ a b c d Christopher Wood, biography, The Redfern Galleries
  18. ^ Wertheim Gallery (London, England)
  19. ^ Offer Waterman
  20. ↑ Christopher Wood, The Last Years British Council, Visual Arts
  21. ↑ visualarts.britishcouncil.org British Council, Visual Arts, accessed February 11, 2019.
  22. ^ Disability Arts, accessed online February 11, 2019.
  23. ↑ Christopher Wood, Archive Collection
  24. ^ The National Archives: Wood, Christopher (1901-1930), Painter
personal data
SURNAME Wood, Christopher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wood, Kit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Knowley, Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1930
Place of death Salisbury