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Lot Essay
'Cornwall is beautiful, rather austere, but I think that if I am here long enough I shall paint good things.' Christopher Wood
St Ives, Cornwall was painted during Christopher Wood’s time in Cornwall with his friends Winifred and Ben Nicholson in the late summer and autumn of 1928. Following a tumultuous period in Paris earlier in the year, this time in St Ives marked Wood’s search for personal equilibrium and a return to nature in his art. Certainly, St Ives equipped Wood with the inspiration and experience that would reappear in his most successful paintings of the remaining years, both in Cornwall and in Breton. Wood personally expressed the significance of 1928 for developing a personal artistic style, writing ‘It is a great moment in my life. I feel things are becoming really vital and the studentship has passed. My work is becoming personal and sure and unlike anybody else’s’ (C. Wood quoted in E. Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p. 29). Certainly, the present work embodies this crucial moment in his short life.
‘Whether it be on the Cornish coast or off the rocks of Normandy, our painter pours on to his canvases expanses of grey sky, stretches of green water, spanking white houses, heavy shapes of sailors and particularly boats. One feels that Mr Wood handles them with love, that he polishes with his hands their wood so soaked with salt, that he looks with the eye of a connoisseur at their keels - that he has penetrated to the secret heart of jib foremast and sail’ (Le Petit Journal, circa 1930, cutting, manuscript translation in the papers of Dr William Mason, quoted in R. Ingleby, Christopher Wood: An English Painter, London, 1995, pp. 237-238).
It was not just the dynamic interplay of land and sea in St Ives that inspired this prolific period of painting for Wood. The artist and Ben Nicholson stumbled across the eighty-year-old retired mariner, Alfred Wallis, towards the end of the summer. Over the ensuing months, Wallis and Wood painted together almost every day. Wallis’ unique combination of a lifetime of maritime experience and untutored approach to painting resulted in an altogether naïve style characterised by thick impasto strokes of Cornish blue and green that appealed to Wood’s own organic painterly descriptions. Wallis’ detailed knowledge of how to navigate a ship through stormy waters is distilled into masterful depictions of the movement of sea vessels in his paintings. Wood translated his friend’s lifetime seafaring experience onto the canvas of the present work, the pair of sail-boats nodding into port against the foaming blue-green waves. Wood’s placement of simple lines and forms to describe these waters instil a definite thrust of direction across the work, into St Ives’ harbour.
The perspective of the present work is still identifiable today. Standing by the lighthouse on Smeaton’s Pier, Wood looks towards the stone bank on which the Pedn-Olva Hotel now stands. Beyond this sits Porthminster Beach, the Malakoff, and a steep stone edifice which Tregenna Castle sits atop. Figures alike the trio of flat-capped mariners besides the lobster pots can still be seen today, emphasising the timelessness of this quintessential Cornish scene.
Eric Newton comments that Wood’s ‘best paintings are at the same time radiant and faintly sinister. Fra Angelico and El Greco, for once, seem to have met on common ground’ (E. Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p. 16). Indeed, the rapturous purity of the bright waves contrasts the formidable curdling grey clouds that indicate a brewing storm. A mood of contemplation so essential to Wood’s mature style is imbued in the present work.
St Ives, Cornwall is a confluence of the many different artistic streams that Wood collected throughout his short yet intense lifetime. His time at the core of the Avant-Garde creative circles of bohemian Paris, the peaceful simplicity of his time in Bankshead and Cornwall with the Nicholsons, and his instinctive visual response to Wallis culminate in a picture that includes many of the classic elements of Wood’s finest pieces.
St Ives, Cornwall was painted during Christopher Wood’s time in Cornwall with his friends Winifred and Ben Nicholson in the late summer and autumn of 1928. Following a tumultuous period in Paris earlier in the year, this time in St Ives marked Wood’s search for personal equilibrium and a return to nature in his art. Certainly, St Ives equipped Wood with the inspiration and experience that would reappear in his most successful paintings of the remaining years, both in Cornwall and in Breton. Wood personally expressed the significance of 1928 for developing a personal artistic style, writing ‘It is a great moment in my life. I feel things are becoming really vital and the studentship has passed. My work is becoming personal and sure and unlike anybody else’s’ (C. Wood quoted in E. Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p. 29). Certainly, the present work embodies this crucial moment in his short life.
‘Whether it be on the Cornish coast or off the rocks of Normandy, our painter pours on to his canvases expanses of grey sky, stretches of green water, spanking white houses, heavy shapes of sailors and particularly boats. One feels that Mr Wood handles them with love, that he polishes with his hands their wood so soaked with salt, that he looks with the eye of a connoisseur at their keels - that he has penetrated to the secret heart of jib foremast and sail’ (Le Petit Journal, circa 1930, cutting, manuscript translation in the papers of Dr William Mason, quoted in R. Ingleby, Christopher Wood: An English Painter, London, 1995, pp. 237-238).
It was not just the dynamic interplay of land and sea in St Ives that inspired this prolific period of painting for Wood. The artist and Ben Nicholson stumbled across the eighty-year-old retired mariner, Alfred Wallis, towards the end of the summer. Over the ensuing months, Wallis and Wood painted together almost every day. Wallis’ unique combination of a lifetime of maritime experience and untutored approach to painting resulted in an altogether naïve style characterised by thick impasto strokes of Cornish blue and green that appealed to Wood’s own organic painterly descriptions. Wallis’ detailed knowledge of how to navigate a ship through stormy waters is distilled into masterful depictions of the movement of sea vessels in his paintings. Wood translated his friend’s lifetime seafaring experience onto the canvas of the present work, the pair of sail-boats nodding into port against the foaming blue-green waves. Wood’s placement of simple lines and forms to describe these waters instil a definite thrust of direction across the work, into St Ives’ harbour.
The perspective of the present work is still identifiable today. Standing by the lighthouse on Smeaton’s Pier, Wood looks towards the stone bank on which the Pedn-Olva Hotel now stands. Beyond this sits Porthminster Beach, the Malakoff, and a steep stone edifice which Tregenna Castle sits atop. Figures alike the trio of flat-capped mariners besides the lobster pots can still be seen today, emphasising the timelessness of this quintessential Cornish scene.
Eric Newton comments that Wood’s ‘best paintings are at the same time radiant and faintly sinister. Fra Angelico and El Greco, for once, seem to have met on common ground’ (E. Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, London, 1938, p. 16). Indeed, the rapturous purity of the bright waves contrasts the formidable curdling grey clouds that indicate a brewing storm. A mood of contemplation so essential to Wood’s mature style is imbued in the present work.
St Ives, Cornwall is a confluence of the many different artistic streams that Wood collected throughout his short yet intense lifetime. His time at the core of the Avant-Garde creative circles of bohemian Paris, the peaceful simplicity of his time in Bankshead and Cornwall with the Nicholsons, and his instinctive visual response to Wallis culminate in a picture that includes many of the classic elements of Wood’s finest pieces.