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CHRISTOPHER WOOD (1901-1930) Nude with Yachts, 1926 Oil on canvas 103 x 81.3 cm (40 ½ x 32 in) Provenance The Redfern Gallery James Melvin (1912-2012) Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London Private collection, Belgium (acquired from the above, 2014) Literature Eric Newton, Christopher Wood, The Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p. 66, no. 133 Nude with Yachts had a particular significance for Christopher Wood, as one of only a few paintings sold by the artist during his lifetime. Following Wood's death in 1930 it was handled by the Redfern Gallery and was sold to the architect James Melvin (1912-2012). The painting was most likely executed in Cannes during the summer of 1927, a year that Wood spent almost entirely in France. It is of an unusual size, at almost 40 inches high, and appears to have been conceived as a magnum opus, with a synthesis of techniques and the drawing together of the artist's primary themes on a single canvas. The influence of France and French art is evident, for example in the drawing of the figure of the girl, which suggests the work of Modigliani, and the composition as a whole, which expresses the synonymous colours and activities of the South of France. Wood at this time had already achieved a serious status and involvement in the English avant-garde. The previous year Cedric Morris had introduced him to Ben and Winifred Nicholson; he had been given his first exhibition (alongside Paul Nash) at the Redfern Gallery; and had become a member of both the London Group and the Seven and Five Society. The relationship with Ben Nicholson was to prove pivotal not just for Wood but for the narrative of British art as a whole, as the two artists played a historic role in the discovery of St Ives as a centre for British modernism. It is likely that the model depicted in Nude with Yachts is Meraud Guinness (1904-1993), who Wood had first met in 1925, and who joined him in Cannes in the summer of 1927. Meraud was the 23 year-old daughter of Benjamin Guinness, and part of a smart international set, with beauty and wealth to match. She and Wood became engaged that summer, but by September he was writing: "Meraud is very sweet and I am very much in love with her...[but] as she will be enormously rich one day and, Christopher Wood Self Portrait, 1927. © Kettle's Yard / Bridgeman. Ede was devastated by the death of his friend Christopher ('Kit') Wood, killed by a train, aged 29, after an opium-induced psychotic incident. He organised Wood's memorial exhibition in 1932, and would continue to lecture, write about and promote his work. The paintings by Wood at Kettle's Yard include harbour scenes, French landscapes, flower studies and a dreamlike work depicting fishermen and sirens (or mermaids). In two large portraits, the sitters gaze directly outwards. Ede sold Boy with Cat (Jean Bourgoint) (1926), a painting in pale tones against a cream background, in 1951 to an acquaintance in Tangier on the agreement that it should eventually return to him. Self-Portrait (1927) is as vibrant and assertive as Boy with Cat is tentative. The colours of Wood's harlequin jumper leach into the Parisian rooftops, offsetting a turquoise sky and tablecloth. He leans against iron railings, brush in hand, beside his paints, pipe and lighter. The effect is captivating, as Ede realised. 'It is himself, painting himself in the material world of his own studio.' 1 1 Ede, A Way of Life, p.217. as her father and mother would like het to marry a duke, I expect the very idea of such a union would be distasteful to say the least of it." The relationship did not last the year. It is not difficult to see Meraud Guinness's role that summer in Cannes as being a powerful catalyst to new approaches in Wood's work. Certainly this was the most passionate moment of their short-lived affair, and certainly she plays a leading part in a group of large-scale works of significant intent, of which Nude with Yachts is the most ambitious and the most resolved. 100