oil on canvas
h43 x w55.5cm (unframed)
h69 by w79cm (framed)

Provenance:
The Redfern Gallery, London, where acquired by Syrie Maughan in April 1938
F.R.S. Yorke and thence by descent to the present owner

Literature:
Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, The Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, no. 264, p. 70

Christopher Wood (1901 – 1930) was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, then briefly studied 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. 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. In 1926, he became a member of both the London Group and the Seven and Five Society plus meeting and befriending Ben and Winifred Nicholson. The Nicholsons’ dedication to his work had a great influence and they exhibited together.

The present work offers an intimate portrait of a model, who is most probably the same model who appears in Wood’s larger and sensational Reclining Nude with Flowers, 1926 (sold Christie’s London, 26 June 2017, lot 14). Here she rests her hand on her head, gazing outwards from the bed with a sense of reverie; delicately poised next to her is a gorgeous and trademark Wood still-life. Wood greatly valued the still-life genre. He looked to the still-lifes of Cezanne and Van Gogh in particular, resulting in many beautiful and intense flower paintings.

Wood was one of few English painters to have genuinely integrated himself among the European avant-garde gathered in France, including Picasso. Upon his first arrival in France in 1924 he met Jean Cocteau and wrote excitedly to his mother: ‘He is a wonderful draftsman also, in fact there is nothing he doesn’t know … He will see only very few people so I have been very lucky to have his time. I think I have made a great friend of him … He and Picasso … are the two outstanding genii of this period, perhaps the only two, certainly in the world of art.’ (Christopher Wood, quoted In R. Ingleby, ‘Christopher Wood: An English Painter’, London, 1995, p. 95). Inhabiting such circles shaped Wood’s artistic outlook, yet he maintained a distinct English sensibility in his paintings and this marriage of ideas is why he holds such an integral place in English modernism, heightened by the bright and brief story of his life cut short by suicide aged 29 in 1930.

‘Reclining Nude and Flowers’ was formerly in the collection of F.R.S. Yorke (1906-1962) and has passed by descent through the family.  Yorke was a significant British modernist architect who together with Eugene Rosenberg, expounded the integral bond between art and architecture, acquiring and commissioning artworks by Britain’s leading avant-garde artists for their buildings.

ARR not applicable.