Christopher Wood (1901-1930)
"Footbridge on the Seine"
Signed and dated 1924, pen and ink, 19.5cm by 30cm

Provenance: The Redfern Gallery, London, Purchaser R. Gathorne-Hardy Esq., January 1945
The Estate of Mrs Markova Noel
Loaned to Sheffield Museums Trust

Christopher Wood (1901-1903), in his short life, became held in high regard amongst artistic circles in both London and Paris, being now remembered as a youthful genius.

Born near Liverpool, he began drawing whilst recovering from septicaemia aged 14. After studying architecture and medicine for just a year at university, he moved to London in 1920. Here he met an art collector, who invited him to Paris, where he studied drawing a the Académie Julien.

He was drawn effortlessly into fashionable artistic circles, where he met Augustus John and the diplomat Antonio de Gandarillas, whom he moved in with and was supported by. Gandarillas also introduced him to the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and George Auric, along with opium. Following the last-minute cancellation of a commission for designs for the Ballets Russe, Wood moved back to London, becoming first a member of the exhibiting collectives the London Group, and then the Seven and Five Society.

Formatively, he exhibited with Ben and Winifred Nicholson in 1927, with whom he would become close friends. Wood accompanied the Nicholsons on painting trips to Cumberland and Cornwall, and in St. Ives discovered Alfred Wallis, whose ‘primitive’ expressionism helped him develop his own style.

In 1929 he was given a solo show at Arthur Tooth & Sons, and a rather less successful joint exhibition with Ben Nicholson in Paris. Having had a painting expedition to Brittany, the resulting paintings were due to be exhibited at Wertheim Gallery in London. However, Wood was struck by a train whilst travelling back from meeting his mother, thought to be suicide brought on by psychosis, despite being reported as an accident at the time. Posthumously, his work was widely exhibited.