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Lot Essay
Wood first met Ben and Winifred Nicholson during the summer of 1926 and they were to remain lifelong friends. He visited them at their home, Bankshead in Cumberland, in March 1928, where Wood wrote of the visit to his mother: 'This is a dear old farmhouse. My room is lovely with great beams going up into the roof and across the room, all whitewashed and a huge window across the end, a box bed with a pretty blue cover, a table, a row of pots of tulips and little hyacinths ...' (letter dated 8 March 1928, see R. Ingleby, Christopher Wood An English Painter, London, 1995, p. 181).
In both artists he found like-minded individuals who inspired him creatively and spiritually. In Winifred in particular he found his soul-mate. Their relationship was so close that Winifred later remarked to Frosca Munster that she often dreamed of the pictures that Wood painted and the words that he would be writing in a letter. She also maintained that she stayed in touch with him, even after his early death in 1930, the year after the present work was painted.
Winifred Nicholson's still lifes had a significant impact on Wood's work, and on his return to Paris in April 1928 she sent him bunches of spring flowers in the post. Ingleby writes, 'Winifred's link to Wood was colour ... Their paintings came closest in their depiction of flowers. Sometimes these were formal arrangements, but they were both at their best with bunches of wild flowers arranged haphazardly in a mug, jug or a glass' (op. cit., p. 184).
Wood's flower paintings and associated still life paintings are amongst his best known and most appealing works. Wood was fond of flowers as a subject, and the present work, Dahlias in a white pot, shows a degree of maturity by which his pictures by this date were characterised. It reveals his incredible and unique understanding of colour and harmony. A similar still life, Dahlias and Larkspur, from 1930 and once in the collection of Captain Ernest Duveen, was sold in these Rooms on 9 June 2006, for £187,200.
Since Wood's death, his work has been celebrated by a major retrospective at the Royal Academy and the Redfern Gallery in 1938 (in which the present work was exhibited), as well as being represented at the Venice Biennale in the same year, and fifty years later in a touring exhibition by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1979. His works can be found in major collections including the Tate, London; The Louvre, Paris; the Graves Gallery, Sheffield; Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.
In both artists he found like-minded individuals who inspired him creatively and spiritually. In Winifred in particular he found his soul-mate. Their relationship was so close that Winifred later remarked to Frosca Munster that she often dreamed of the pictures that Wood painted and the words that he would be writing in a letter. She also maintained that she stayed in touch with him, even after his early death in 1930, the year after the present work was painted.
Winifred Nicholson's still lifes had a significant impact on Wood's work, and on his return to Paris in April 1928 she sent him bunches of spring flowers in the post. Ingleby writes, 'Winifred's link to Wood was colour ... Their paintings came closest in their depiction of flowers. Sometimes these were formal arrangements, but they were both at their best with bunches of wild flowers arranged haphazardly in a mug, jug or a glass' (op. cit., p. 184).
Wood's flower paintings and associated still life paintings are amongst his best known and most appealing works. Wood was fond of flowers as a subject, and the present work, Dahlias in a white pot, shows a degree of maturity by which his pictures by this date were characterised. It reveals his incredible and unique understanding of colour and harmony. A similar still life, Dahlias and Larkspur, from 1930 and once in the collection of Captain Ernest Duveen, was sold in these Rooms on 9 June 2006, for £187,200.
Since Wood's death, his work has been celebrated by a major retrospective at the Royal Academy and the Redfern Gallery in 1938 (in which the present work was exhibited), as well as being represented at the Venice Biennale in the same year, and fifty years later in a touring exhibition by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1979. His works can be found in major collections including the Tate, London; The Louvre, Paris; the Graves Gallery, Sheffield; Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC.