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Lot Essay
Fishing Village, Cornwall was painted in 1926, the year that Christopher Wood first visited St Ives in Cornwall. The Cornish coast had a deep impact on Wood, and from this year until his untimely death in 1930, the artist painted a number of harbour and coastal scenes both in Cornwall and in Brittany, which rank among the greatest paintings in his oeuvre. With a directness and simplicity, in Fishing Village, Cornwall, Wood has depicted a quintessential Cornish town with an array of bold colours. Under the bright blue sky, the white houses of the village gleam, while in the foreground the harbour is filled with two boats floating on the deep turquoise sea.
Wood had, since 1921, been living and working predominantly in Paris. Having met many of the leading figures of the avant-garde and seen the myriad of modern styles and artistic techniques being used in the French capital, Wood recognised the importance of forging his own, unique artistic style. He wrote in 1925, the year before Fishing Village, Cornwall was painted, ‘All the pictures that I paint now will be fatal, one way or another, to my career. They must be personal, quite different to everyone else’s and full of English character.’ (Wood, quoted in V. Button, Christopher Wood, London, 2003, p. 39).
Wood’s trip to the British coast in 1926 was vital to the development and emergence of his distinctive simplistic and deliberately naïve style. The clear light, rocky coastline, and small villages of Cornwall were the antithesis of cosmopolitan Paris, and greatly inspired Wood; he described in a letter to this mother, ‘the coastline is arid with huge rocks and towering black cliffs, and little coves and creeks with the greenest water you ever saw, with little white cottages clinging like wild flowers to the rocks.’ (Wood quoted in H. Gresty, ‘Christopher Wood, The Innocent and the Modern’ in Christopher Wood: The Last Years 1928-1930, exhibition catalogue, Newlyn, Art Gallery, 1989, p. 8). Imbued with a freshness and directness, Fishing Village, Cornwall encapsulates Wood’s newly emergent style. Specific pictorial and scenic detail is replaced by bold planes of colour applied with varied, often visible brushstrokes. Wood wrote again to his mother in 1926, ‘I know that my stay in St. Ives has been a great profit to me as I have at least learnt how to finish my work, which is the most… difficult part. I feel I have thought a lot and assimilated much and that now really I feel that I am an artist and couldn’t ever have done anything else in my life, which is a great comfort to me’ (Wood quoted in Button, op. cit., p. 41). Filled with a newfound artistic confidence, Wood continued to visit the Cornish coast, often accompanying the artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson with whom he formed a deep and lasting friendship, sharing their direct approach to the depiction of the landscape.
Wood had, since 1921, been living and working predominantly in Paris. Having met many of the leading figures of the avant-garde and seen the myriad of modern styles and artistic techniques being used in the French capital, Wood recognised the importance of forging his own, unique artistic style. He wrote in 1925, the year before Fishing Village, Cornwall was painted, ‘All the pictures that I paint now will be fatal, one way or another, to my career. They must be personal, quite different to everyone else’s and full of English character.’ (Wood, quoted in V. Button, Christopher Wood, London, 2003, p. 39).
Wood’s trip to the British coast in 1926 was vital to the development and emergence of his distinctive simplistic and deliberately naïve style. The clear light, rocky coastline, and small villages of Cornwall were the antithesis of cosmopolitan Paris, and greatly inspired Wood; he described in a letter to this mother, ‘the coastline is arid with huge rocks and towering black cliffs, and little coves and creeks with the greenest water you ever saw, with little white cottages clinging like wild flowers to the rocks.’ (Wood quoted in H. Gresty, ‘Christopher Wood, The Innocent and the Modern’ in Christopher Wood: The Last Years 1928-1930, exhibition catalogue, Newlyn, Art Gallery, 1989, p. 8). Imbued with a freshness and directness, Fishing Village, Cornwall encapsulates Wood’s newly emergent style. Specific pictorial and scenic detail is replaced by bold planes of colour applied with varied, often visible brushstrokes. Wood wrote again to his mother in 1926, ‘I know that my stay in St. Ives has been a great profit to me as I have at least learnt how to finish my work, which is the most… difficult part. I feel I have thought a lot and assimilated much and that now really I feel that I am an artist and couldn’t ever have done anything else in my life, which is a great comfort to me’ (Wood quoted in Button, op. cit., p. 41). Filled with a newfound artistic confidence, Wood continued to visit the Cornish coast, often accompanying the artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson with whom he formed a deep and lasting friendship, sharing their direct approach to the depiction of the landscape.