Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

1901 - 1930

Christopher Wood was born in Knowsley, near Liverpool to parents Dr Lucius and Clare Wood. He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire and went on to Liverpool University to briefly study medicine and architecture. It was here that he met Augustus John who encouraged him to become an artist. Alphonse Kahn, a French collector, invited Wood to Paris in 1920 where he trained at the Academie Julien from 1921. He met Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Aurin and Diaghilev who became friends in his artistic circle. In the early summer of the same year, he met Jose Antonio Gandarillas Huici, a Chilean diplomat, a married homosexual, 14 years his senior with whom Wood was to have a relationship with throughout his short life. This relationship was to survive other affairs with Jeanne Bourgoint, his plans to elope with and marry heiress Meraud Guinness (scuppered by her parents) and Russian emgree, Frosca Munster. Wood was bisexual which caused inner strife during his lifetime. Gandarillas, led a glamorous life, often funded by gambling and Wood was introduced by him to a vibrant and decadent social scene in Paris plus to the opium drug. The hallucinogenic aspect of the drug added many surrealistic images to Wood’s work and some of his greatest works may have resulted from his addiction but so too was his demise, after withdrawal symptoms caused him deep paranoia and ultimate suicide. He wrote to gallery owner Lucy Wertheim that opium was “the only resource of quietness which takes my mind…out ... show more

Christopher Wood was born in Knowsley, near Liverpool to parents Dr Lucius and Clare Wood. He was educated at Marlborough College, Wiltshire and went on to Liverpool University to briefly study medicine and architecture. It was here that he met Augustus John who encouraged him to become an artist. Alphonse Kahn, a French collector, invited Wood to Paris in 1920 where he trained at the Academie Julien from 1921. He met Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Aurin and Diaghilev who became friends in his artistic circle. In the early summer of the same year, he met Jose Antonio Gandarillas Huici, a Chilean diplomat, a married homosexual, 14 years his senior with whom Wood was to have a relationship with throughout his short life. This relationship was to survive other affairs with Jeanne Bourgoint, his plans to elope with and marry heiress Meraud Guinness (scuppered by her parents) and Russian emgree, Frosca Munster. Wood was bisexual which caused inner strife during his lifetime. Gandarillas, led a glamorous life, often funded by gambling and Wood was introduced by him to a vibrant and decadent social scene in Paris plus to the opium drug. The hallucinogenic aspect of the drug added many surrealistic images to Wood’s work and some of his greatest works may have resulted from his addiction but so too was his demise, after withdrawal symptoms caused him deep paranoia and ultimate suicide. He wrote to gallery owner Lucy Wertheim that opium was “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”. Christopher Wood attracted friends and devotees wherever he went. He was handsome, charismatic and talented and as a young man living life to the full within the Parisian social scene, he “decided to try to be the greatest painter that has ever lived”. From 1922 to 1924, Wood travelled extensively throughout Europe and North Africa. In 1926 he created designs for Constant Lambert’s Romeo & Juliet for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, but they were never used. In the same year he became a member of The London Group and the Seven and Five Society when he met Ben & Winifred Nicholson who were to become great friends, in addition to influencing his work. They exhibited together in 1927 and spent time painting in Cumberland and Cornwall. Christopher Wood was much influenced by post-Impressionism and modernism, but it was in 1928 that a visit to St Ives was to carve his style in primitivism, an extension of his enthusiasm for Gaughin’s work. He drew unashamedly from Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Henri Rousseau and the Fauvists, but it was at this time that he developed his trademark in an individual naïve style. It is said that he went for a walk through the streets of St Ives with Ben Nicholson and peering through an open door, they spotted pictures of “dramatic sea voyages painted on an assortment of odd-shaped supports made from salvaged pieces of driftwood and cardboard torn from grocery boxes”. This was the work of Cornish fisherman and untrained artist Alfred Wallis. His work was to have a profound effect on Wood and can be seen in this work of a harbour scene, a subject also very familiar to Wallis’s work. Wood painted in Dieppe and the fishing village of Treboul in Brittany in 1929 and can arguably be said that these were some of his finest works despite Wood having said “cost of such painting is heavy”. He pushed himself to the limit during 1929 – 1930 and a combination of being psychologically troubled with his sexuality, frequent withdrawal symptoms from his dalliance and addiction with opium and possible financial troubles led to a dark place in his life. In May 1930 he had an unsuccessful exhibition at the Georges Bernheim Gallery in Paris. In June and July he went to Brittany to create new work, after which Lucy Wertheim came to Paris to select paintings for a one-man show at the opening of her new gallery in London, in October. At this meeting he demanded an annual sum of money “otherwise I have made up my mind to shoot myself”. In August he travelled to meet his mother and sister for lunch at The County Hotel in Salisbury to show them a selection of his latest work. After this, he jumped under a train at Salisbury railway station. His mother requested it be reported as an accident. Winifred Nicholson so devastated by the news, employed a private detective to prove another cause of death other than suicide. Wood is buried at All Saints Church at Broad Chalke where his father was running a general practice. His gravestone was carved by fellow artist and sculptor Eric Gill. The Wertheim Gallery exhibition was cancelled after his death, but a posthumous exhibition was held in 1931. An exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1932 and the Redfern Gallery later compiled a major retrospective of his work. Pallant House, Chichester, held an exhibition “Christopher Wood, Sophisticated Primitive” in 2016.   There are several publications on Christopher Wood. His work hangs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, The National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Tate Gallery, London and The National Portrait Gallery, London. A superb self-portrait can be seen hanging at the permanent collection at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge University.