Christopher Wood, Self Portrait 1927.
Christopher Wood 1901-1930. Having left my old smoke-filled industrial town of Bolton in September 1965 I arrived at Trent Park College, North London. I thought I had landed on a completely different planet ! My inmates at Ludgrove Hall of Residence would by enlarge seldom surface from their beds on a Saturday morning before 12 noon. As for me…….filled with an air of exploration, I would board the tube train at Cockfosters and traverse the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square. Here, the world of Mayfair art galleries overwhelmed me with excitement and inspiration.
On Saturday 13th November 1965 I visited the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street, Mayfair. Yes the date is easily memorable as I kept a diary of my gallery visits. That day I was introduced to the art of Christopher Wood.
My diary visit to the Redfern. Redfern, invitation to the opening of the exhibition (no I wasn’t invited !). Newspaper review of the exhibition, sorry it’s not easy to read.
Christopher Wood was born in Knowsley to Doctor Lucius and Clare Wood, Dr Wood was a doctor on the Knowsley Estate. He was educated at Freshfield Preparatory School, Formby before spending a term at Marlborough College, Wiltshire. A one-term sojourn at Malvern College, studying medicine, followed in 1918 before a transfer to Liverpool University studying architecture. He left Liverpool within his first year !
At Liverpool University, Wood met Augustus John who encouraged him to be a painter. In 1920 Wood took a job with a fruit importation company, here he met art collector Alphonse Kahn who invited him to Paris, initially living with Kahn on the Bois de Boulogne.
In the 1920s his father was running a general practice in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, and Wood painted a series of canvases there including Cottage in Broadchalke, Anemones in a Window, Broadchalke, and The Red Cottage, Broadchalke.
Cottage in Broadchalke and The Red Cottage, Broadchalke.
J.A. Gandarillas by Christopher Wood 1926.
Wood was bisexual. In the early summer of 1921, Wood met José Antonio Gandarillas Huici, a Chilean diplomat. Gandarillas was a married homosexual fourteen years older than Wood, their relationship lasted through Wood’s life.
In 1922 Wood and Gandarillas travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa. Returning to Paris Wood moved into Gandarilla’s house at 60 La Montaigne although he kept his studio on the Rue des Sant Peres.
In 1922, less than a year after arriving in the French capital, he explained in a letter to his mother that most modern artists strove to interpret their subjects as though ‘through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except that which would strike them as being the most important’. The published letters of Van Gogh also had a huge impact, in particular the comparison he made between the solitary struggle of the artist and the hard-worn existence of rural peasants, who he felt were closer to nature and therefore less morally corrupt. Reflecting on the purity of Van Gogh’s ideas, Wood commented to his mother ‘He must have had such a beautiful mind, so broad nothing petty could have entered his head, otherwise he could never have painted.’
In 1923 the two embarked on a motor tour of Scotland. Wood also visited an exhibition in London including works by Paul Nash, Matthew Smith and Walter Sickert, Wood regularly sees Augustus John. In 1925 Wood spent some time with Picasso who gave him advice on drawing. Returning to London, Wood begins creating designs for the Ballet Russes’s first English-themed ballet.
In 1926 Wood embarks on his first heterosexual affair with Jeanne Bourgoint, who poses for nude studies and portraits.
Christopher Wood ‘Jeanne Bourgoint’ – Woman With Fox’. 1929
In August 1926 Wood makes his first trip to Cornwall travelling with Gandarillas, first to the Scilly Isles then on to St Ives in the September. He meets Ben and Winifred Nicholson.
A growing relationship between Wood and the Nicholson’s saw them sharing exhibitions and subsequently painting together in Cumberland and Cornwall in 1928. The Nicholson’s had acquired a stone house named Bankshead in Cumbria in 1923. Wood arrived at Bankshead in the spring of 1928. Suitably inspired Wood wrote “I am absolutely on the verge of the real thing after what I learnt and saw at Bankshead”.
Like Nicholson, Wood admired Alfred Wallis whom they met on a trip to St Ives, and whose primitivism influenced Woods’ stylistic development. He painted coastal scenes, and his finest works are considered to be those painted in Brittany in 1929 and during his second trip to Brittany in 1930 when he painted fewer marine pictures and more churches. He claimed that his “mother’s people were Cornish and that he got his love of the sea and for boats from his Cornish ancestry”.
By 1930, painting frenetically in preparation for his Wertheim exhibition in London, Wood became psychotic and began carrying a revolver. On 21 August he travelled to meet his mother and sister for lunch at ‘The County Hotel’ in Salisbury and to show them a selection of his latest paintings. After saying goodbye he jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station, although in deference to his mother’s wishes it was reported as an accident.
Christopher Wood is buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Broad Chalke. His gravestone was carved by fellow artist and sculptor Eric Gill.
By 1930, painting frenetically in preparation for his Wertheim exhibition in London, Wood became psychotic and began carrying a revolver. On 21 August he travelled to meet hismother and sister for lunch at ‘The County Hotel’ in Salisbury and to show them a selection of his latest paintings. After saying goodbye he jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station, although in deference to his mother’s wishes it was reported as an accident.
Christopher Wood is buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Broad Chalke. His gravestone was carved by fellow artist and sculptor Eric Gill.
https://artuk.org/discover/artists/wood-Chchristopher-19011930
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/christopher-wood
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/search/actor:wood-christopher-19011930/page/5
https://www.meisterdrucke.uk/artist/Christopher-Wood.html
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/search/actor:wood-christopher-19011930/page/5
Graham Bennison, November 2020.
Artistic Horizons 
One thought on “Christopher Wood”