- 163
Christopher Wood
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
bidding is closed
Description
- Christopher Wood
- Young Girl
- oil on canvas
- 73 by 51cm.; 28¾ by 20in.
- Executed in 1928.
Provenance
H.S. Ede, by whom gifted to the family of the present owners circa 1960
Exhibited
London, New Burlington Galleries, Christopher Wood: Exhibition of Complete Works, 1938, cat. no.324;
Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, Rutherford Loan Scheme (details untraced);
London, The Fine Art Society, From a Private Collection, 16th June - 1st July 2010, cat. no.1, illustrated.
Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, Rutherford Loan Scheme (details untraced);
London, The Fine Art Society, From a Private Collection, 16th June - 1st July 2010, cat. no.1, illustrated.
Literature
Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p.73, cat. no.337.
Catalogue Note
Christopher Wood's short, turbulent and charmed life reads like a novel, a character by Waugh or Firbanks. Arriving in Paris in the spring of 1921, the path to his death in 1930 at the age of 29 seems, with hindsight, almost pre-ordained. Mixing in the most chic circles, travelling to the Mediterranean and North Africa, friendships with Cocteau, Picasso and Diaghilev, romantic entanglements and drugs, it is easy to let this rather louche and glamorous backdrop obscure his genuine talent and achievement as a painter.
In the early 1920s his work reflects a good deal of the fashionable mixed with the influence of the giants of the time, but by around 1926 we see his work starting to take on a distinct character of its own, and it is from this point that portraiture forms a small but significant part of his output. The rightly famous Jean Burgoint with Siamese Cat (Kettle's Yard, Cambridge) of 1926 is a remarkable painting in the context of British art at the time, mixing highly finished, almost Foujita-like passages with quickly brushed, seemingly unfinished areas. Other portraits of his circle, such as that of his friend Tony Gandarillas (Portrait of J.A.Gandarillas, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth) show his ability to catch a likeness and character of his sitter, but it is with the magisterial Self-Portrait (Kettle's Yard, Cambridge) of 1927 that we see Wood create a portrait that is also a definite statement of his own artistic intent and progress.
It is perhaps a shame that Wood did not explore portraiture more fully after this, those few that remain offering a tantalising suggestion of his ability in this genre. Young Girl is such a piece, its sparing use of paint, simplicity of form and balanced colour combining with the genuine evocation of character to create a modernist British portraiture that only really might find a parallel in the work of Wood's great friend Winifred Nicholson.
In the early 1920s his work reflects a good deal of the fashionable mixed with the influence of the giants of the time, but by around 1926 we see his work starting to take on a distinct character of its own, and it is from this point that portraiture forms a small but significant part of his output. The rightly famous Jean Burgoint with Siamese Cat (Kettle's Yard, Cambridge) of 1926 is a remarkable painting in the context of British art at the time, mixing highly finished, almost Foujita-like passages with quickly brushed, seemingly unfinished areas. Other portraits of his circle, such as that of his friend Tony Gandarillas (Portrait of J.A.Gandarillas, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth) show his ability to catch a likeness and character of his sitter, but it is with the magisterial Self-Portrait (Kettle's Yard, Cambridge) of 1927 that we see Wood create a portrait that is also a definite statement of his own artistic intent and progress.
It is perhaps a shame that Wood did not explore portraiture more fully after this, those few that remain offering a tantalising suggestion of his ability in this genre. Young Girl is such a piece, its sparing use of paint, simplicity of form and balanced colour combining with the genuine evocation of character to create a modernist British portraiture that only really might find a parallel in the work of Wood's great friend Winifred Nicholson.