Christopher Wood

Alex Reid & Lefevre, London
Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, 21st May 1947
Gifted to their daughter Ruth Ash in 1965, by whom gifted to The Dartington Hall Trust in 1986

London, Alex Reid & Lefevre, Memorial Exhibition of The Most Recent Paintings by Christopher Wood, April 1932, cat. no.10 (as Woman in Pony Cart) (probably);
London, The New Burlington Galleries, Christopher Wood, 3rd March - 2nd April 1938, cat. no.170;
London, Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood, 8th - 31st May 1947, cat. no.38;
Dartington Hall, The Exhibition Gallery, An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture 1900-1947, June 1947;
Dartington Hall, Paintings, Sculpture, Furniture Belonging to Mr & Mrs Elmhirst , 1951, cat. no.13;
Colchester, The Minories, Christopher Wood, 29th March - 15th April 1979, cat. no.31 (as Breton Woman on a Pony Cart 1929), illustrated p.7, with Arts Council Tour to Durham Light Infantry Museum and Arts Centre, Durham, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, and Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter;
Penzance, Newlyn Art Gallery, Christopher Wood: The Last Years, 28th October - 25th November 1989, cat. no.72 (as Breton Woman in a Pony Cart), with tour to The Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, The Glynn Vivian Arts Gallery, Swansea and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge;
St Ives, Tate Gallery, Christopher Wood, A Painter Between Two Cornwalls, 16th November 1996 - 20th April 1997, cat. no.17, with tour to Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quimper.

Eric Newton, Christopher Wood, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, cat. no.383, p.74.

The board is sound. There is some old frame abrasion and wear to places about the edges. There are some small spots of raised matter in the bottom left corner, these appear to be inherent to the board. There are a few flecks of old paint loss to the fence to the right of the horse and a further fleck to the hedgerow on the central hill, which appears to have been infilled. There are a few lines of craquelure in the upper right corner and to the centre of all but the top edge. There are a few spots of minor paint separation, including to places on the building on the left, to the horse and to the woman's shawl. The surface is slightly dirty and may benefit from a light clean. Ultraviolet light reveals a spot of retouching to the aforementioned fleck of paint loss on the hedgerow. Other pigments fluoresce which are apparently the hand of the artist. Held under glass in a painted plaster frame. Please telephone the department on 0207 293 6242 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Christopher Wood first visited Brittany in the spring of 1929 and returned over the summer, painting in the ports of Dieppe, St Malo, Douarnenez and Concarneau. The paintings he executed show for the first time a consistency unseen in his work up to this point. Brittany seems to have induced a productive period of stability and stimulation, resulting in an impressive body of works that display marvellous qualities of colour, line and empathy with his surroundings.

'This is a nice place', Wood wrote to Ben Nicholson soon after he had arrived, 'you would like the boats, for they only sail here and the big ones are wonderful with their brown sails... The place is very like St Ives. In fact everything here looks like Cornwall, which makes me want to be back there again with you' (quoted in Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood, Allison and Busby, London, 1995, p.217). Wood returned to Brittany in the summer of 1930, renting a hotel room just across from the house he had stayed in the previous year. He was at first alone until his lover Frosca Munster joined him, and he began to work productively, painting forty pictures over the following six weeks in an extraordinary burst of creativity. 'This year's work is in the same spirit as last year's', he wrote to his friend and patron Lucy Wertheim in July 1930, 'but much further on, much more composed and reflective, not so wildly poetic, but sounder and more subtle' (ibid., p.243).

The present work belongs to this last fruitful period, and depicts little white houses nestled in the green hills under the shadow of the steeple of Ploaré, which is on the outskirts of Tréboul. The foreground shows the enclosed courtyard facing onto the Avenue de la Gare, Tréboul, site of the railway station that served both Tréboul and Douarnenez. In the middle distance can be seen the waters of the Port Rhu and a house on the quayside. The horse and cart stand in what is perhaps the station forecourt, the woman dressed in traditional peasant costume, with the 'borléden' headdress of the Quimper region. Perhaps she is waiting to meet someone from the train but Wood leaves it unclear, inviting the viewer to imagine a narrative.

Pony and Trap, Ploaré, Brittany and the other paintings of this period such as Douarnenez, Brittany (1930, Tate Collection) and Mending Nets, Tréboul (1930, Private Collection) demonstrate the impressive development of Wood's work shortly before he died tragically in 1930. Their lyrical qualities, sensual colours and distinct interpretations of mood show an artistic maturity and identity well advanced from his earlier years of experimentation, and which displayed so much promise for the future.