Christopher Wood (English painter)
| Christopher Wood | |
|---|---|
Self portrait (1927)
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| Born |
John Christopher Wood 7 April 1901 Knowsley, Liverpool |
| Died | 21 August 1930 (aged 29) Salisbury, Wiltshire Suicide |
| Resting place | All Saints, South Street, Broadchalke, Wiltshire, SP5 5DH |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | Liverpool University, Académie Julian |
| Known for | painter |
| Movement | Post-Impressionism, Primitivism |
John Christopher Wood (7 April 1901 – 21 August 1930), also known as Kit Wood, was an English painter born in Knowsley, near Liverpool.
Christopher Wood was born in Knowsley to Doctor Lucius and Clare Wood. He was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, then briefly flirted with medicine and architecture at Liverpool University before pursuing an artistic career.
At Liverpool University, Wood met Augustus John, who encouraged him to be a painter. The French collector Alphonse Kahn invited him to Paris in 1920. From 1921 he trained as a painter at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Auric and Diaghilev. He travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924.
By the 1920s his father was running a General Practice in Broad Chalke, Wiltshire, and Wood painted a series of canvases there including Cottage in Broadchalke, Anemones in a Window, Broadchalke, and The Red Cottage, Broadchalke.
In 1926 Wood created designs for Romeo and Juliet for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, although they were never used. The same year he became a member of both the London Group and the Seven and Five Society plus meeting and befriending Ben Nicholson and Winifred Nicholson. The Nicholsons' dedication to his work had a great influence and they subsequently painted together in Northumberland and Cornwall, then exhibited together at the Beaux Arts Gallery in April–May 1927. Like Nicholson, Wood admired Alfred Wallis whom they met on a trip to St Ives, and whose primitivism influenced Woods' stylistic development. He painted coastal scenes, and his finest works are considered to be those painted in Brittany in 1929. He claimed that his "mother's people were Cornish and that he got his love of the sea and for boats from his Cornish ancestry".
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