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拍品专文
‘Do you know that all the great modern painters … are not trying to see things and paint them through the eyes and experience of a man of forty or fifty or whatever they may be, but rather through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except those things which would strike him as being the most important? To the childish drawing they add the beauty and refinement of their own experience – this is the explanation of modern painting.’
(Wood, quoted in V. Button, Christopher Wood, London, 2003, p. 37).
Painted in 1925 while Christopher Wood was living and working in Paris, St Cloud presents a tranquil scene of modern life. Framed with rich, verdant green vegetation, a group of children are pictured playing in a Parisian park, accompanied by their mothers and child minders.
Like the great French Impressionists before him, including Monet, Renoir and Degas, as well as Manet, Wood has taken as his subject a scene of contemporary Parisian life. The composition of St Cloud is reminiscent of Manet’s Music in the Tuileries, from 1862 (National Gallery, London); the same large tree trunks border the scene, framing the figures that stand in the foreground of the painting. Having moved from London to Paris in 1921, Wood had immersed himself in the exuberant and eclectic art world of the city. He admired many of the modern masters, including Picasso, Matisse and Gauguin, yet aimed to develop a highly personal and individual style, such as is evident in St Cloud. Rendered with a bold simplicity, the areas of unmodulated, flattened colour in St Cloud, such as the dark, curved tree trunks and the array of rich, green tones of the foliage, demonstrate Wood’s great love of colour, while the simplified depiction of the figures exemplifies the artist’s distinctive, naïve style, which he would continue to develop from this year onwards.
(Wood, quoted in V. Button, Christopher Wood, London, 2003, p. 37).
Painted in 1925 while Christopher Wood was living and working in Paris, St Cloud presents a tranquil scene of modern life. Framed with rich, verdant green vegetation, a group of children are pictured playing in a Parisian park, accompanied by their mothers and child minders.
Like the great French Impressionists before him, including Monet, Renoir and Degas, as well as Manet, Wood has taken as his subject a scene of contemporary Parisian life. The composition of St Cloud is reminiscent of Manet’s Music in the Tuileries, from 1862 (National Gallery, London); the same large tree trunks border the scene, framing the figures that stand in the foreground of the painting. Having moved from London to Paris in 1921, Wood had immersed himself in the exuberant and eclectic art world of the city. He admired many of the modern masters, including Picasso, Matisse and Gauguin, yet aimed to develop a highly personal and individual style, such as is evident in St Cloud. Rendered with a bold simplicity, the areas of unmodulated, flattened colour in St Cloud, such as the dark, curved tree trunks and the array of rich, green tones of the foliage, demonstrate Wood’s great love of colour, while the simplified depiction of the figures exemplifies the artist’s distinctive, naïve style, which he would continue to develop from this year onwards.