Photo: © Kettle's Yard
Painting
Paris Snow Scene, 1926
About the artist
Born 1901 – Died 1930
Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood was born in Knowsley, near Liverpool. Following an injury while playing football, Wood contracted a blood disease and was nursed at home by his mother, who encouraged him to take up watercolour painting. Although he had no formal training, he went to Paris in 1921 with the ambition of becoming ‘the greatest painter that ever lived.’ Soon establishing himself as a prominent and popular figure among the artistic and social circles of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde, he mingled with aristocrats and won the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. During these years, he also travelled to Europe and North Africa with José Antonio de Gandarillas, a diplomat at the Chilean embassy in Paris.
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Wood’s light handling of paint is appropriate to the weather in Paris Snow Scene. As the stamp on the reverse indicates, the scene was painted on a commercially prepared canvas, the primed surface of which serves as the snow on the ground and the roofs. Some pencil sketching is visible, but this was reworked in black paint for the skeletal trees and railings and for the outlines of the houses. This transfer of drawing techniques into oil, with coloured accents within the open working, is comparable with the urban views of Maurice Utrillo. While not quite achieving the ease of the Frenchman’s work, it carries some of the nervous tension typical of Wood.
Although it dates from before Wood’s friendship with the Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Paris Snow Scene may also be usefully contrasted with Ben Nicholson’s Snowscape of the same year (in the Kettle’s Yard collection). There are obvious differences of location, but comparison of the treatment is revealing. Where the latter captured the density of the weather, Wood attempted to show the crispness that settled snow brings. The trees stand out in detail as the reversal of black to white on the ground brings a revision of the familiar. The sharpness of colour in this piece, exemplified by the blue and red cars at dead centre, call to mind Ben Nicholson’s observation that colour always seemed more intense in the company of Wood.
The view appears to be that from the window of the Parisian flat belonging to Tony Gandarillas, Wood’s mentor and companion, at the east end of the Avenue Montaigne. The artist made a number of paintings and drawings of this scene. The downward view into the street had been favoured by the Impressionists and Matisse, as it suggests an instantaneous glimpse of activity observed with impartiality. An enthusiasm for the dynamics of urban existence had supporters across the cultural spectrum in the 1920s, from newspapers to the avant-garde Purist periodical L’Esprit Nouveau, to which Wood was a subscriber.
Provenance: purchased from the artist (or the estate) by H.S. (Jim) Ede, date unknown