Featured Artist: Christopher Wood

Tréboul Harbour (c.1929)

“Young or short lives are more sensitive indicators of the pressure of public attitudes than lives lived long and crowned with honours. The stories of young people who delight parents and friends with their talents have a concentrated significance in their beginnings, and in their premature ends there is a natural poignancy that brutally epitomises the disappointment that is also common but less evident in longer, duller lives.” Sebastian Faulks. Christopher Wood died at the early age of 29 when he stepped in front of a train at Salisbury Railway Station. Records differ to whether this was a simple accident or he purposefully committed suicide. At the time it is known that he was suffering from paranoia and psychosis as a direct result of his heavy addiction to opium and it seems this is likely to have had a strong effect on his decision making, conscious or otherwise. It seems morbid and somewhat gloomy to begin this article by talking about his untimely death however it is this emphasis on the fragile nature of human life which forms the essence of Wood’s delicate disposition. It also reminds us that we only ever see Wood as an early career artist in his formative years. It will of course never be known how Wood’s career may or may not have progressed and perhaps we could even conclude that Wood’s success is found within the idea of ‘what could have been’ with his level of ambition, passion and influential network of patronage.

In his lifetime Wood was an incredibly fragile character both physically and emotionally. Physically he was often in ill health; during his early teenage years he suffered from septicaemia and, in his twenties, his drug addiction began to take its toll. Emotionally, Wood often lived in turmoil as he lived with a deep rooted insecurity founded on a desperate yearning for acceptance amongst the European artistic elite. Wood recorded much of his personal life in the form of letters to his mother and later to close friends such as Ben and Winifred Nicholson. The abundance of letters to his mother read like diary entries in both approach and frequency; they are written as if to compensate for the lack of physical contact they had during his extended periods travelling away from home.  Popular author Sebastian Faulks has compiled these letters to form a fascinating biographical account of Wood’s life in ‘The Fatal Englishman’ published in 1996.

Despite his personal feelings of failure and inadequacy, Wood enjoyed close friendships with many highly regarded contemporaries and had support from influential patrons. In 1920 Wood had the opportunity to move to Paris and began to study Fine Art at the Académie Julian. Despite having remarkable opportunities in Paris, and making good friendships, Wood still lacked confidence. This lack of self-assurance led him to turn to, and subsequently become dependent on, drugs. Smoking opium was fashionable amongst certain European elite at the time and enabled him to disguise his social awkwardness and feelings of inadequacy. The Parisian arts scene also gave Wood a chance to meet more people of great influence including Augustus John and Picasso. Soon after Wood moved to Paris he become closely associated with prominent diplomat and patron of the arts Antonio de Gandarillas. Gandarillas financially supported Wood’s career, offered him somewhere to stay and gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe with him on many occasions.  This contact significantly elevated Wood’s prospects and status as an emerging European artist.

In 1926, Wood was fortunate to meet and become good friends with Ben and Winifred Nicholson and from this time onwards he frequently stayed with them in St Ives and Cumberland. The Nicholsons became almost like peer mentors to the slightly naive young artist. Wood’s work is also often described as naive due to his often unrefined technique, raw style and starkly obvious representations of boats, figures and landscapes. Sometimes this is due to the fact that most of Wood’s paintings were produced when he was still finding his style, however we can also see this element of naivety in later works. For example, the desolate boat scenes painted in Brittany in the late 1920s have a remarkable primitive quality derived from combining unrefined honesty with stark, sometimes crude, simplicity. It was on one of Wood and Ben Nicholson’s visits to St Ives that they came across the work of local Fisherman and painter Alfred Wallis. As a result of this encounter Wood began to gain pride and confidence in his primitive style. Their work “shared an interest in 'primitive' expression and helped Wood to establish a personal style.”

During the summer of 1929 (the summer before Wood died) he spent a significant amount of time in the small fishing village of Tréboul, France.  It was during one of these stays that he painted ‘Tréboul Harbour’ which is part of the Bishop Otter Art Collection. Wood’s letters home during this period suggest that these may have been the happiest days of his life; he was relaxed, content and in love. Wood enjoyed sailing around the harbour in Tréboul in his simple wooden boat and sometimes even decided to paint whilst aboard. However, despite what should have been a slower pace of life than he had experienced in Paris, Wood quickly worked himself into a frenzy, prolifically producing multiple new works. At the end of July he returned to England but “was mentally and physically exhausted by his work, and his system had been abused by alternative indulgence in, and withdrawal from, large amounts of opium.” Wood’s behaviour was increasingly paranoid and erratic and it was after a brief reunion lunch with his mother in Salisbury that his young life reached its tragic conclusion.

Emily Robson
Otter Gallery Exhibitions & Outreach Officer
January 2010

Faulks, Sebastian. The Fatal Englishman: Three Short lives (Vintage, 1996)
Stephens, Chris. Artist Biography: Christopher Wood (www.tate.org.uk) (April 2006) Accessed 9/01/10
Faulks, Sebastian. The Fatal Englishman; Three short lives (Vintage, 1996) p. 76
Faulks, Sebastian. The Fatal Englishman; Three short lives (Vintage, 1996) p. 90