Christopher Wood. 1930
La Plage, Hotel Ty-Mad Treboul, France
Oil on Board 59.6 X 68.8 cm
Museums Sheffield
On the 11th August I went to the Christopher Wood Exhibition at Pallant House in Chichester. There were five rooms exhibiting his work from when he first started to take his art seriously with a hunger to learn to his final days in France painting beach scenes, chapels and churches, until his untimely death when he threw himself under a fast train.
Room 1 – an education
Looking around this first room of the exhibition I get the impression that Christopher was exceptionally inquisitive and experimental and had a thirst for knowledge to drive forward his creative development.
In order to really understand other artists that interested him he would paint in their style, and he used many different styles, colour palettes, painting techniques and compositional arrangements.
Room 2 – theatrical parallels
This second room is mainly dedicated to figurative work and portraiture of friends and acquaintances as well as set designs for ballets. I see him settling into a style which is simplistic, colourful yet bold and confident with the sitters filling the frames.
Room 3 – English horizons
Very much now we get the connection of his special friendship with Winifred Nicholson. There are landscapes of Cumbria where she lived and also seascapes of Cornwall. Later on I will return to this room to write in brief on one painting.
Room 4 – gathering stormclouds
Many of the paintings in this room are of seascapes in France, looking at these works I get the impression of calm and beauty but also turmoil, confusion and isolation. Many of the seascapes have a lot of detail in them.
Room 5 – swan song
The overall impression of the selection of paintings from this final room is his maturity and understanding of balance and composition, as well as a sophisticated connection with colour to describe mood for each work.
The landscapes, beach scenes, churches and chapels have a simplicity with just enough detail and naive freshness yet these paintings have such maturity and sense of completion.
Christopher Wood
China dogs in a St Ives window, 1926
Gouache on panel, 63.5 X 76.2cm
Pallant House gallery , Chichester: on loan from private collection
Analyse in detail why you like or do not like the composition
This painting has interest and balance, there are two things happening here, there is the calm relaxed atmosphere within the room with the dichotomy of the energy outside of the changing weather.
This is expressed by the relaxed pose of the Staffordshire dog and her pups nestled in the armchair.
I can almost feel the warmth in the room from the sunlight earlier on shining through the window, someone has opened the window slightly suggesting that all it
needs now is some sea air.
Outside the cool blue of the sky and looming grey clouds suggests a change in the weather, perhaps a breeze picking up, creating a choppy and unpredictable sea.
The shapes of the objects within the room, window frames and seascape fills the frame. I like the almost organic shape of the red wood ground behind the dogs and the drawn back curtain that seems to mirror the shapes of the hills in the background outside.
Critical thinking
Thinking effectively and applying sound intellectual standards to your thinking, pinning down what you think of the work and why, asking yourself questions about materials, composition, placement, colour palette and how these work together to make an artwork.
Observational drawing and Mark making helps to explore the work, taking an eye in to take a closer look.
I copied this painting around 2006 – 07 with Gouache probably on cardboard, as Alfred Wallis would have used. I no longer have the original. Looking at it now I can see some discrepancies with my painting and the original work. However, rather like Christopher learning about an artist by copying, I have also done the same here in order to try to understand him.
I really like this Kit Wood painting for many reasons. Firstly the limited palette of warm and cool colours. This palette draws attention to the warmth and peace of the room with perhaps a slightly chill and blisterly day outside.
The browns of the window frame and curtains, the pinks of the hills in the distance and oranges of the Staffordshire dogs and armchair with the cool blues of the sea and sky and the greys of the looming storm clouds. Also the little spot of the orange of the flag on the steamer in middle distance. I like the flat, rather dull tones of the Gouache paint, if I close my eyes the field between outside and inside the room has a real depth by the use of the warm palette in the foreground and the cool palette of outside.
Finally, I love the naive style of Christopher Wood and the element of fantasy in this painting. To me, the flat orange ground shape behind the dogs looks like an armchair, making the dogs real and not China ornaments at all.
What amazed me from this exhibition is learning that Wood painted this picture before being aware of any work by either Winifred Nicholson or Alfred Wallis.
Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson discover Alfred Wallis
This statement by Ben Nicholson is under a painting by Alfred Wallis in another gallery in Pallant house, the painting is:
Alfred Wallis
Grey Schooner
Pencil on Board
On loan from a private collection
Quote:
In August 1928 I went over for the day to St Ives with Kit Wood: This was an exciting day, for not only was it the first time I saw St Ives, but on the way back from Porthmeor Beach we passed an open door in Back Road West and through it saw some paintings of ships and houses on odd pieces of paper and cardboard nailed up all over the wall. We knocked on the door and inside found Wallis, and the paintings we got from him were the first he made.
apennypiece 