Christopher Wood: An Irregular Life
“I seem to live on the very edge of the world. But what an edge it is.”
The story of English painter Christopher Wood is fascinating but sadly short. Handsome and talented, he embraced the art worlds of Paris and London and attracted friends and admirers, including Picasso and Cocteau. But his life was also fraught with doubt, and in the summer of 1930, aged just twenty-nine, he died under the wheels of a train, leaving behind him not only a compelling portfolio of work but also a legacy as a tragic genius.
John Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood was born on 7th April 1901 in Knowsley, near Liverpool in the north of England. His father, Lucius Wood, worked as a doctor on the Early of Derby’s Knowsley Estate, and his mother, Clare, came from a prosperous Lancashire family.
Following an early education at Freshfield Preparatory School, Wood enrolled at Marlborough College but was there for just one term. In 1915, aged fourteen, he was injured while playing football and contracted septicaemia. Bed-bound for three years, his mother nursed him at home and encouraged him to learn drawing and watercolour painting to pass the time.
In 1918, after recovering but left with a permanent limp, he enrolled at Malvern College to study medicine but dropped out after just one term to read architecture at Liverpool University instead. Before the end of the first year, however, he turned his back on formal education, moved to London, and got a job working for a fruit importation company near the West End. In his downtime, he would draw outside local cafes and bars, where he met other artists, including Wyndham Lewis and Augustus John. John introduced him to Alphonse Khan, an art collector and financier who, enamoured by Wood’s handsome face and innocent charm, invited him to Paris.
Dearest Mother, you ask me what I am going to do: I have decided to try and be the greatest painter that has ever lived.
Letter from Christopher Wood to Clare Wood, October 19211