Art: Nice Magic

Christopher Wood was only 29 when he killed himself in 1930—a bright, charming Englishman who had apparently failed to make the grade as an artist. His mother gave many of Wood’s paintings away. A man named Rex de C. Nan Kivell, director of London’s Redfern Gallery, quietly bought them up. Last week the Redfern was showing Wood’s paintings to admiring crowds, and selling them for as much as £1,500 apiece.

Wood’s 20s coincided with those of the century. He spent them in a gay round of European travels with rich friends. “One must get all the pleasure out of life that is possible,” he wrote his mother. “I suppose you couldn’t possibly either send me my allowance in advance or lend me about 15 pounds so that I can square this beastly hotel off and get my things.”

He borrowed from other artists as well; until two years before the end, Wood’s work was shamelessly eclectic. Then, at little resorts on the coasts of Brittany and Cornwall, he learned to paint nudes and landscapes in a nice, decorative, pleasant style of his own. London Sunday Times Critic Eric Newton has supplied some loftier adjectives for it. “One must be content,” he wrote, taking a deep breath, “with saying that Christopher Wood possessed the gift of making everyday things both magical and mystical, and of performing the miracle endlessly. The ingredients of his magic are things available to us all—boats, white houses, stone walls, fishing nets, but the essence of magic is that it is inexplicable.”