Christopher Wood

Capt. Arthur Gibbs, by 1938
Private Collection, U.S.A., from whom acquired by the present owners, October 1985

London, The New Burlington Galleries, Christopher Wood: Exhibition of Complete Works, March – April 1938, cat. no.132.

Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, Redfern Gallery, London 1938, cat. no.304.

Original canvas. There are some feint and scattered lines of paint separation to the mustard pigments of the chair, to the yellow pigment of the vase and to the cigarettes and pipe. There are some other minor scattered lines otherwise in good original condition with strong passages of impasto throughout. Under ultraviolet light, there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held in a painted plaster frame with canvas inset. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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There is often a strange duality in Wood's paintings which their subject matter belies. His somewhat changeable mental states, which fluctuated widely depending on his circumstances and relationships inevitably impinged on his paintings and the present work, an apparently casual arrangement of everyday objects and flowers, does, on closer inspection, take on a rather different character.

The newspaper on the table has a reference to the Prix Goncourt, the important French literary prize which is presented in early December. Wood had returned to Paris in very late November 1928 to a certain turmoil in his personal life. Having spent much of the autumn in St Ives, initially with the Nicholsons, and with a visit from Frosca Munster, the new focus of his affections, Wood spent the later part of the trip alone in his rented cottage in what his letters suggest was some very unsettled weather. His painting ebbed and flowed, resulting in some superb work such as A Cornish Window (Private Collection), but his letters to both Frosca and his mother suggest that he was feeling somewhat alone. The letters to Frosca also disclosed that his opium supply was running short. With limited funds and, one imagines, limited sources of supply in wintery west Cornwall, it seems that on his return to Paris he was able to indulge himself a little. This coincided with a coolness in his friendship with Tony Gandarillas and the re-emergence into his circle of Meraud Guinness, with whom Wood had been involved the previous year.

As before, opium provided Wood with an escape from the varied currents within his life, and the presence of the pipe right in the foreground of the picture, as well as the packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes, is very suggestive of the part narcotics of various types had come to play in his life. The lighting of the painting is unusually harsh, with few obvious shadows perhaps indicating that the source may be an overhead bulb. Wood has also moved in uncomfortably close to his subject, almost all of the chair being cut off and the thin black lines that indicate panelling or perhaps a door are all that defines the space beyond the collection of still life objects that form the focus of the picture. At the heart of this is a spray of flowers. Whilst the pipe, packet, paper and even the jug are painted with Wood's usual broad and fluid handling, the flowers themselves are rendered with a huge level of intensity, and perhaps this heightened attention to them is testimony to his state of mind.