ARR Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

The Yellow Garage

labelled 1927 verso, signed lower right

oil on canvas, 36.5cm x 44.5cm

: Sir Charles Edward Lambe (1900-1960) and Lady Lambe and thence by descent

: Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

Born on April 7, 1901 in Liverpool, Wood initially attended Liverpool University wavering between architecture and medicine. After meeting Augustus John, who encouraged him to pursue painting, he determined to become an artist.

In 1920, the French businessman and collector Alphonse Kahn invited him to Paris. Here, from 1921 he trained as a painter at the Academie Julian, meeting Diaghilev, George Auric, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso. Travelling widely across North Africa and Europe after his studies, by 1926, Wood was creating designs (albeit unused) for the theatre including Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Further in 1926 he became a member of the London Group and the Seven and Five Society as well as striking a lifelong friendship with Ben and Winifred Nicholson. He exhibited with the Nicholson’s at the Beaux Art Gallery in April-May 1927, and the label seen on the back of the present painting indicates that this work was part of this particular exhibition. Wood later went on to paint together with the Nicholsons in Cumbria and Cornwall.

In Paris, Wood had met Jose Antonio Gadarillas Huici, the son of a Chilean diplomat and their relationship lasted throughout his lifetime, although Wood was variously involved with men and women, including the poet, painter and heiress Meraud Guiness.

Gadarillas had introduced Wood to opium and the hallucinogenic effect of the drug sparked surrealistic elements in the artist’s work. In 1930, Wood took to carrying a revolver with him and suffered psychotic episodes. Wood eventually committed suicide in 1930 at the age of only 29, having jumped under a train in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Wood’s work is represented in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the Tate Gallery in London.

Wood is well known for idiosyncratic depictions of St. Ives and surrounds. Inspired by the naïve art of Cornish fisherman Alfred Wallis, Wood assumed skewed perspectives and a distorted scale to frame his richly muted colours and elegant lines.

“Do you know that all the great modern painters are not trying to see things and paint them through the eyes of a man of forty or fifty or whatever they may be, but through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except the things that would strike him as being the most important?”

Wood’s allusion to a childlike vision of the world is reflected in this work and whilst the scene of the Yellow Garage is at first glance cheerful, with a lady in summer clothing promenading before brightly coloured buildings, there is also a menacing aspect in the colouration of the sky, the figures peering out of the dark interior of the garage itself and the gaze of the taller woman in white towards the older woman staring at the ground before her.

In a similarly styled painting by Wood, also dated 1927, the artist depicts 'The Barber's Family', presumably inspired by his time in the South of France given the signage of the barber's shop as 'Coiffeur'. A remarkably similar linear street scene it is almost a continuation of the present painting.

Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Edward Lambe GCB, CVO (1900 – 1960) was an avid collector of contemporary artists and an accomplished painter himself. Lambe later became First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff in May 1959. Another painting by Christopher Wood, titled 'St Ives, Cornwall' is also known to have sold to Admiral Sir Charles Lambe in 1935.

Exhibited

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Christopher Wood Exhibition, 1966 [label verso]

The Beaux Art Gallery, 1 Bruton Place, London [label verso]