Christopher Wood

(British, 1901-1930)

At Marseilles 54.2 x 65.1 cm. (21 1/4 x 25 5/8 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Max Ede, 1951, thence by family descent to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, British Romantic Paintings in the 20th Century, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain, 27 July-22 August 1953, cat.no.70; this exhibition travelled to Aberystwyth, Gregynog Gallery of the National Library of Wales, Swansea, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery

Literature
Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, The Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p.70, cat.no.251

The present, exceptional example by Christopher Wood has remained in the same family collection since it was acquired over seventy years ago by Max Ede (brother of Jim, the esteemed founder of Kettles Yard Gallery in Cambridge). Painted in 1927, it dates from a pivotal period for the artist, a year after meeting Ben and Winifred Nicholson and a year prior to his 'discovery' of Alfred Wallis in St Ives.

Wood was blessed with a number of natural attributes that served him well in his pursuit of success - good looks, charm, talent, a supportive mother and endless ambition – but he also, by his own admission, enjoyed a certain amount of chance in the social connections he made, that contributed in no small part to his budding career and professional recognition. This good fortune began in London in 1920 when a nineteen year old Wood received an invitation to Paris from Alphonse Kahn, one of the most prominent collectors of the day who moved in all the right circles. Just six months after his arrival in Paris in March 1921 as a relative unknown, Wood declared in a letter to his mother that he had "decided to try and be the greatest painter that has ever lived" (Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood, An English Painter, Allison and Busby, London, 1995, p.13). This determination was borne not just from self-belief but from an admiration for the lives of the high-brow artistic community he found himself in, mingling with the likes of Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and, crucially, a Chilean diplomat named Antonio (Tony) de Gandarillas. Tony was well connected, bisexual and glamourous all of which piqued Wood's interest and they remained close companions for years to come, with Gandarillas assuming the role of the young painter's greatest advocate.

In 1926, Wood returned to England, spending time in both St Ives and London, and it was the latter where another pivotal meeting took place, with Ben and Winifred Nicholson. Cedric Morris had taken Wood along as a guest to the Nicholson's flat in Chelsea and having formed an instant connection they visited him the very next day at Tony's house in Cheyne Walk to view his recent paintings. Winifred recorded these in her memoir as "masterpiece upon masterpiece....Here was England's first painter. His vision is true, his grasp is real, his power is life itself" (Op.Cit., p.142). The Nicholsons became lifelong friends, personally and artistically, and Wood was elected to the Seven & Five Society on their proposal. With Ben as Chairman and the driving force behind the Society, Wood exhibited four paintings in January 1927 to critical acclaim from the Sunday Times. It was also this year that Nicholson introduced Wood to art collector, Jim Ede, who became a great friend and supporter of his work. Ede famously went on to house his great collection of Wood's work and that of other St Ives artists, at his Kettle's Yard Gallery and it is believed he had a hand in helping his brother, Max, acquire the present work as a 50th birthday gift for his wife Kathleen in 1951.

However, having started the year on a positive note and feeling his star was rising, a disappointing exhibition at Beaux Arts alongside the Nicholsons in April put his feet firmly on the ground again. Affected by the less than favourable reviews, he abandoned plans of a summer in London and retreated to France. There, he licked his wounds, first on a Mediterranean cruise followed by a trip to Cannes. And it was there, under the blazing skies of the French Riviera, whilst Tony was in rehab in Vichy for his 'debauchery', that Wood re-met Meraud Guinness, having initially made her acquaintance in London two years prior. Wood idealised the Nicholson's relationship and decided that he needed a Winifred to his Ben. Meraud fulfilled the criteria being beautiful, influential and an artist herself. They fell in love over the summer of 1927 and planned to marry but (both) sensing the disapproval of Meraud's parents, it was over before it really started. Her father, in particular, was unimpressed by the young painter's lack of money together with a clear opium addiction.

At this time, Tony became unwell again, now in a nursing home in Nice and Wood visited him daily to offer support, grateful for an opportunity to repay the elder man's long kindness. And more bad news followed with the report of a dear friend, Rene Crevel, on his deathbed in a Marseilles hotel. In a letter to the Nicholson's from Marseille, he described the effect of the place and recent events on his work saying 'that the atmosphere of the place, coloured by his friends' serious illness, and the unavoidable introduction to the concept of mortality that went with it, was having a strange effect on his work. His painting was once again the only thing that really mattered. He was, he told them, simplifying his forms and giving "...a good firm edge to everything"' (Op.Cit., p.169). And so it was that, after a difficult personal period, Wood threw himself into painting in the South of France.

Having been brought up close to the Liverpool docks, he had a natural affinity with the sea, and particularly with boats and harbours, which he would explore further in Cornwall and Brittany in the following years. At Marseilles was painted towards the end of a tumultuous 1927, and depicts the autumnal French quayside with boats and townscape sandwiched between two bands of brooding Prussian blue sky and water. His treatment of the large canvas is thoroughly modernist, as he utilises his usual broad and fluid handling. The evening scene is flattened and abstracted with the forms of the buildings reduced to tonal planes and the windows a patterned grid work. Eric Newton comments that Wood's 'best paintings are at the same time radiant and faintly sinister. Fra Angelico and El Greco, for once, seem to have met on common ground' (Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p.16). In the present work, offered at auction here for the first time, a muted palette and serene composition (for what must usually have been a bright, jostling location) lend the mood of contemplation so essential to Wood's mature style. And a poignant stillness reveals an artist surely deep in thought, reflecting on what had passed that year but also looking forward with confidence to what was yet to come, tragically unaware there would be just three short years left to realise his dreams.