Christopher 'Kit' Wood-A Life Wasted? Or An Inspiration To Others?

Christopher “Kit” Wood. Left Liverpool at the age of 19 and proclaimed that he would become the greatest painter the world had ever seen. He had £14 in his pocket.

He was born in Huyton, then in the countryside near Liverpool.

He was sent to boarding school in Malvern at an early age.

He had been interested in medicine and architecture at Liverpool University where he met the painter Augustus John who was then teaching there.

He arrived in Paris in March 1921 at the invitation of the collector Alphonse Kahn.

There he studied at the Academie Julian where he met many of the worlds soon to be famous painters.

He was bisexual.

Paris was the modern city and the capital of art.

Rules had been broken and the intellectual way of painting had arrived decades earlier. 

'Kit' got some bad habits, such as Opium which may have been introduced to him by his rich Playboy lover, Antonio de Gandarillas

His addiction would greatly hinder him.

“My brain is working too hard, he said, and I don't know where the end will come, I work so hard and produce nothing whatsoever to satisfy me”

In Feb 1927 none other than Picasso recommended that Kit design the set for Serg Dagliev's Romeo and Juliet at Theatre Du Chatelet.

It was a disaster. As Dagliev had a blazing row with him and he was sacked.

In 1927 his plans to elope and marry heiress Meraud Guinness were frustrated by her parents whereupon he required emotional support from Winifred Nicholson.

Despondent but with fresh ideas swimming around in his head he headed for Cornwall. His mother was Cornish.

 In the summer of 1928 Kit joined Ben Nicholson on Sunday 26^th August for a sketching trip to St Ives.

 He had high hopes on the English Riviera. 

They headed for Porthmeor beach and painted.

After a successful day spent painting they packed up and set for home

Then something happened that would change both their lives 

There in a small cottage with an open door they both peered in and in a room full of paintings.

 They had discovered the work of Alfred Wallis. 

The naivety was an inspiration and Kit stayed on for the autumn, renting a place closed to Wallis.

Nicholson went back to London to spread the word of the encounter as if the Messiah had arrived. 

“If I am here long enough, he said I am going to paint good things”. Kit said.

He began to paint scenes inspired by the Cornish Coast with its fresh light.

Had he finally found the inspiration he desired. Cocteau who said he was an exceptional painter, now meant nothing to him.

He started painting inspired by Wallis who he visited every day, but the hallucinogenic addiction that he had to Opium was preying on him.

He became paranoid and began to lose his mind painting some sinister scenes in what would be some of his last works.

Wallis opened up a spirit in him and his work was beginning to bear fruit. 

He felt as if he belonged to the light of the coast of St Ives.

Wallis became a cult recording the decline of the fishing industry in his own silly way that seems to have conjured up dreamlike sequences for aspiring artists who now flocked there. Wallis painted on anything he could find and he was free not having had any training. 

He was poor and in 1890 after chasing shoals of fish out in the deep sea. He painted from memory and his perspective is very strange indeed, but it was this charming naivety that the new modern artists adored.

Kits work then took on a paranoid sense of his own gloom laden opium twisted senses.

In 1929 he held a solo exhibition at Tooths Gallery in Bond Street.

 He met Lucy Wertheim there, she would become a supporter of his.

"I know that my future as a painter from now on will be bound up with your own, and I shall become great through you!" He would say to her.

In May 1930 he had a largely unsuccessful exhibition with Nicholson in Paris. In June and July he made a second trip to Brittany to create new work.

 Later in July Lucy travelled to meet Kit in Paris, to choose the paintings for a one-man show that would be the opening exhibition at her new Wertheim Gallery in October.

While discussing the exhibition over lunch the day after her arrival, Wood issued her with an ultimatum: "'I want you to promise to guarantee me twelve hundred pounds a year from the time of my exhibition, one hundred pounds a month being the least I can live on. If I can't have this sum I've made up my mind to shoot myself'".

 When she complained, he begged her forgiveness, and they went to review the paintings again.

On 21^st august 1930 Kit met his mother for Lunch in Salisbury and then through himself under a train. He was 29.

This was reported as an accident.

Following his death the show was cancelled; it was eventually staged as a memorial show at a different gallery in 1931.

He was buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church in Broad Chalke.

 His gravestone was carved by the sculptor Eric Gill.

CODA

Alfred Wallis.

An ex fisherman he retired from the sea in 1890 and opened a marine supply store.

When his wife died in the 1920's he began to paint.

 Little did he know that his melancholy would inspire a generation.

He was naïve alright and poor he painted on anything he could get his hands on.

He had no idea about perspective and his subliminal thoughts began to show through and inspire others. He would say that he painted out of his mind as it was.

Wallis was sent to a madhouse as he was chased by ghosts. He died a celebrity amongst the artists and he was entombed by Bernard Leach who erected his epitaph.

The art community came to pay its respects.

Henry Tonks-The Real War Artist.

Henry Tonks was a war artist of the highest degree. He did not do landscapes.

He was a Professor. Maybe a little old fashioned.

Henry Tonks said when he taught art at the Slade “I will resign if this talk of cubism continues”

He had taught many artists such as Paul Nash at the Slade School of Art but he did not teach him enough. Paul Nash's paintings have become an important visual reference for us when thinking about the conflict, including this powerful, apocalyptic vision of nature violated by war. Nash was commissioned by a government scheme, in 1916, which initially aimed to illustrate publications with drawings to supplement the limited photographs available. Nash had served briefly in the Ypres Salient in 1917 before being invalided out. When he returned to Belgium as an artist, he was shocked by the devastation wrought by the battle of Passchendaele. All of the commissioned artists’ work had to be passed by the official censor. While depictions of dead British soldiers were unacceptable, this devastated landscape managed to pass unchallenged due to its symbolic, rather than literal, content. Nash’s startling, new, modernist vision would bring him huge acclaim in the art world.

However, Colonel A N Lee, the censor, could not foresee this. He wrote: “I cannot help thinking that Nash is having a huge joke with the British public, and lovers of ‘art’ in particular. Is he?”

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dead-mans-penny-edward-carter-preston.html

While Paul Nash was basking in glory, stylising suffering as official war artist, Henry Tonks was recording the reality of war on a very intimate scale.

Tonks too old for front line action volunteered as an orderly.

Dr Harold Gilles had helped set up a pioneering new hospital specialising in facial surgery. 

When Gilles, who was the head surgeon realised that Tonks was working there his instincts to record the remodelling or rebuilding of a face were assisted when he asked Tonks to help him.

 He needed colour and Tonks with his background as a surgeon and then as a demonstrator of anatomy understood what Gilles needed.

He was in the right place at the right time to do his bit for the war.

Reconstructive surgery at that time was largely at its infancy and mostly made up of just clinching flesh, and pulling it over to close up a wound and stitching it into a part of the face that would help it to resemble what was there before.

Tonks sat with forlorn soldiers who had given up hope, whose lives were dead inside.

Some would never recover from the wounds they had endured. 

When we say the scars of war, he recorded them in all their disfigured glory. 

They were humans who had given themselves in the cause of freedom.

With dignity Tonks made a portrait in soft pastel of Walter Ashworth of the Bradford Pals who injured on the first day of the first world war.

In the first few minutes the Pals were cut to ribbons.

He also made a diagram of where to stitch and then he painted him again after the reconstruction that gave him what was described as 'a pleasant smile'.

Art as modernism in a modern age. He had to use the skills of Leonardo Da Vinci for a new age, after all he was qualified.

He said about his portraits “These are the only works of which I am not ashamed.”

He would help in rescuing these wretched creatures lives, of abandoned luck and malicious evil.

Artistic compassion was required.

Imagine the sitter seeing his image and knowing how he looked.

 The sharing of this ordeal will have been hard.

It is so difficult today to look at these images, even in reproduction through the internet or on TV.

But look you must, because in these images we see why war is wrong and those heroic stories of heroism in the face of fire fall heavy down to earth when you witness what Henry saw. 

Fire in the face.

No matter how hard I look I turn away from the reality. I try again and still my mind wont let me focus, it is too real, I turn away again and again I try to look.

It seems as if you don't want to, so as not to defy a lifetime of watching war films made, rightly to testify to those brave sods who went over the top. But this is reality.

But, we the world turned its back on the truth and it is only now a hundred years later that we can palate the truth of Henry Tonks images of soldiers brave, those without palates, for a lot of them had been blown to smithereens.

 Those poor people who would not only be reminded, after the war, of that indiscriminate trajectory missile that scarred them.

These faces would remind every one else of the horrors of war and so they would be saddled with carrying the guilt of others lives cut short.

They say when you are staring into the abyss you find yourself, but these poor people look like lost souls, like ghostly images from the deep. I have spared the reader the full horror.

Or are they just the depths of our of our own spirit?

They make you realise that those who were lucky, were sometimes dead. They did not have to live the horrors for the rest of their life. They were free of the stigma of half a decade of mass murder on an industrial scale in those Flanders Fields.

You don't see this sort of stuff in films such as Where Eagles Dare or Force 10 from Navaronne.

We do not see the blood of war like the trench reality would have been.

You cant smell the stench of rotting flesh.

Even though we know Spielberg can do such a brilliant job of convincing us, of showing bullets flying through the air and hollowing the sounds war makes, he would never dare show this. The censors would not let him. But look we must.

When the Americans chased Saddam Hussains Iraqi army out of Kuwait and bombed the hell out of them on the road back to Basra they left many of them as charred skeletons torn of flesh. The images captured by brave war correspondents, of this stench of death, were banned from being shown to the American public.

They might ruin the breakfasts of a nation and spoil their day.

There is no redemption for the victors of war, for they write history. And as with the Vietnamese murder zone a picture can tell a story.

PR can save a President who should be shot or be on trial for war crimes.

For these works by Henry Tonks show the side of war that I want to forget, but I must look at.

I must learn to stare and so I should challenge Presidents and Prime Ministers and Saudi Princes in pure white stainless linen with blood on their hands.

Tony Blair should be made to look at these pictures of the aftermath of war.

Those who survive who will be forever locked into a dream like sequence of recurring nightmare night after night, cast into perpetual recollection for perpetuity, waking up every night screaming need compassion.

So not only is the suffering of war written on the faces of those Tonks Tommy soldier boys they were branded with them for life, or what was left of that life.

How could these boys be taken and destroyed in the flowering of their youth.

And while I am writing this article I see an image by Francis Bacon.

It looks like one of Tonks Tommies with a twisted face, yet this is of his lover.

It seems that he is copying Henry Tonks style?.......but as a way to make himself look clever, to show his prowess as a painter. He has captured Tonks images.

It may be that he has just stumbled across a style.

Bacon grew up during the blitz it is well recorded. He saw bad times.

But did Bacon ever see these images of real despair by Henry Tonks?

Bacon was brave enough to use the twisted and tortured souls of his portraiture and turn it into modernism.

Why can we look at Bacon's work with ease?

No matter how we tell ourselves its haunting we flinch to turn away from images of poor Tommy boys crying inside, bleeding from within.

Is this because Bacon was capturing emotion and not recording the tragedy of grief?

Who could except the compassionate respectful and watchful eye of Henry Tonks?

Who was the better artist?

For to Tonks I tip my hat, to a man who cared, not for himself, because the pastels and watercolours he did was not gallery work, that would hang for all to see on pristine white walls. But show us our guilt of futile pride and slaughter.

  Tonks work has been hidden from public view for almost a hundred years. From a public who would be upset, who would not turn up if they were displayed in a gallery. Maybe they should not be displayed on public view.

They were much more important than that.  

Daum Vase-Piece of the Week

DAUM.

Founded by The Brothers Auguste and Antonin in the town of Nancy in the French region of Alsace-Lorraine.
They would create glassware of exceptional quality with varying techniques of finest workmanship that would, at times, rival the work of Galle.

The first Department of Art was created within the small family glassworks which would interpret the spirit of Art Nouveau.
They moved with the times through the Twenties and Thirties an evolution into a Art Deco style.


They would welcome in a new era in the 1950's and still make glasswares today.

100 years ago it was not just the case of expressing a new artform but aquiring the techniques to express it in glass. To imbue a feeling or a sincerity, the Daum Brothers wanted to make work that would outshine its rivals.

Works that would create an arousal, not only in the style but an understanding of the complexity of the piece, heightening the sense of achievement of the craftsman and designers collaboration.

Shape, Decoration, Colour and Material would be the four elements that would contribute to the organic processs that would be the hallmark of Art Nouveau.

Spirits of Autumn Summer and Winter would all be brought into play with hues and glows that conjure up a feeling inside each work of art.

It is as if they have been found on the floor of the forest rather than in a glasswork factory.

Its not as if you can go and get a recipe book. The artistic glassmaker would have to carry out his own experiments and write down the formula.

Lets as example think how would you obtain the exact colour, in glass for, lets say and Orchid or a Thistle head of a Cow Parsley.
 Or crisping leaves in autumnal differing grades of decay, of red and gold.

A few companies such as Appert of St Denis would supply Antonin Daum with some of his early supplies.

Often glassworkers would move companies or transfer to a different area and it was important to train the skilled workers of the future.

In 1925 Paul Daum refined and transformed the pallete.

Michel Daum would start working in lead crystal. After the Second World War the company would largely abandon glass in favour of lead crystal.

Between 1891 and 1914 3,000 different models appeared.

1920 to 1939 saw 2,000.

They won medals and honours, first prizes galore taking the official exhibitions extremely seriously in helping stimulate revenue through sales. Chicago 1893. Nancy and Lyon 1894. Brussels 1895 and 1897. There was a Legion of Honour for Auguste. In 1900 at the World Fair, like Galle, Daum were awarded a First Prize and Antonin a Legion D'Hounour.

Exhibitions at Ecole de Nancy the Pavillion de Marsan 1903 and Nancy itself in 1905 and 1908. Strasboug 1908 Paris and Brussels 1910. Then Gand 1913 and Lyon 1914. It just went on, and on. After the Great War they would show their style at the Paris Expostion des Art Decorative Et Industrial Moderne in 1925 moving into a more geometric and angular vision that would lend itseld to acid etching pattern.

This petite slimly bulbous vase is only 20cm high and is a yellowish base or pallette where the green hues of leaves blowing in the wind have been overlaid and carved back by wheel cutting. Several different colours of glass tinted by oxides can be seen to be applied to make up the overall effect. It is a painting in molton glass.

The base clearly displays the Daum Nancy mark and proudly proclaims the Cross of Lorraine as a symbol of defiance.

Alsace Lorraaine was lost to the Germans in 1870.during The Franco Prussian War.

Napoleon III had won Nice and Savoy in 1861 from Turin. It had been Italian.

Famous for Quiche Lorrane Alsation dogs, it was named Elsass Lothringen by the Germans. Many Road names are today still in German. There is a marker or two to the Magino line.

Bismark took it in 1871 This was one of the underlying causes of the First World War.

The first world war one charge was an attempt to take it back which they didn’t do till 1918.Germany took it again in 1940 The Germans re-uniting with the motherland of the German Reich. The French re occupation happened in 1944.

Antiques Roadshow 2016 Valuation Location Dates

There are some great venues for 2016 from a Scottish World Heritage Site to a Cornish Garden.

 2015 was a very good year with an average of six million people watching the show.

I had a great time as part of the Roadshow team in 2015.

2016 looks like being a very exciting year but we rely on the wonderful people who take the time to bring their treasured possessions along.

 Not forgetting the things that may not appear to have any value, that they may have found in a skip or that may have been in the loft for decades.







We are there to help people understand the items they bring along and hear the stories that are contained within,
 If you can get the chance to pop along to one of the beautiful historic venues you will be assured a great day out.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4BFprksgSjpvxsdCTwDFQlJ/roadshows-in-2016