Christopher Wood

Redfern Gallery, London
Arthur Crossland
Sale, Christie's London, 9th March 1956, lot 199, where acquired by Mr Wingate
Acquired by the late owner by the 1980s

London, Redfern Gallery, Christopher Wood: Exhibition of Complete Works, 3rd March - 2nd April 1938, cat. no.218;
Newcastle upon Tyne, Laing Art Gallery, Modern Drawings and Paintings Lent by Arthur Crossland Esquire, 1939, cat. no.210.

Eric Newton, Christopher Wood, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p.69, cat. no.170.

Original canvas. The canvas appears sound. There are some slight stretcher marks visible around the edges of the canvas. There is a possible frame abrasion to the upper horizontal edge. There is some scattered craquelure, with one or two very tiny flecks of loss, and a small spot of lifting towards the lower right of the larger brown sail. There are two pinholes visible to the sitting woman's head and shoulder. There is some light surface dirt. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals one or two small flecks of fluorescence, which appear to be inkeeping with the artist's materials. The work is presented in an ornate carved wooden frame with linen slip, with some losses to the painted surface of the frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The year 1926 was pivotal in Christopher Wood’s short but whirlwind career, marking the mid-point between his arrival in Paris at the start of the decade, and his tragic death at its close. With gallivants across the Mediterranean and North Africa, keeping the company and concomitant lifestyle of Cocteau, Picasso and Diaghilev, 1921-1925 witnessed the young artist’s exposure to an exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle. Come the following spring, however, Wood’s attention returned to his home country, where his work was to be shaped immeasurably.

Following a brief and tempestuous involvement with Diaghilev’s plans for his new ballet Romeo and Juliet Wood returned to England, where he would settle in St. Ives from August until October. His mother’s ancestors originated from the Cornish coast, and having grown up close to the Liverpool docks, Wood was drawn strongly to the sea. Quays and boats had been particularly recurrent features in many of his scenes from Brittany and the Canadel coast, but here the theme exhibits the forging of a unique character in his painting. Whilst his style retains elements of its fashionable Parisian accent, the work reveals a novel use of colour that would become a defining characteristic of his later oeuvre. The palette of blues, greys, browns and white that conjures the brooding sea and sky is ignited by the vibrant red of the central sails and subjects; a language that was established in other works from 1926, such as Ship Leaving a Cornish Port (Private Collection) and continued to be refined in Wood’s final paintings, including Zebra and Parachute, 1930 (Tate, London). Eric Newton praised this attribute as ‘absurd, yet it is inevitable, like a jewel round the neck of a beautiful woman, which ought by all the rules of contrast, to make her complexion seem faded, and yet enhances it.’ (Eric Newton, Christopher Wood, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p. 51)

The importance of Wood’s introduction to St. Ives was immense, sparking a creative advance that would ascend exponentially over the next few years. Equal and connected to this influence was his relationship with Ben and Winifred Nicholson, which began late in 1926, and which would shift the course of British modernism on their ‘discovery’ of Alfred Wallis in St. Ives just two years later. Their professional alliance began with Ben’s invitation for Wood to join the Seven and Five Society and continued to grow, but it is clear that Wood drew as much from their intimate friendship, particularly that of Winifred, with whom his extensive correspondence was recently compiled in Anne Goodchild’s Dear Winifred: Christopher Wood: Letters to Winifred and Ben Nicholson 1926-1930, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2013. At the blossoming of their friendship Winifred was pregnant with the couple’s first son, Jake, who would be born the following June. It is a touching and not implausible thought that the couple cradling the baby in the present work were intended as a tribute to his new companions, and are possibly a precedent for his portrait of the family in The Fisherman’s Farewell, 1928 (Tate, London).