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Open: Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–5pm

We are closed on Bank Holiday Mondays

Please note the house will be temporarily closed for 4 weeks from 14 March 2024

Photo: © Kettle's Yard

Painting

Paris Snow Scene, 1926

Christopher Wood
Oil on canvas
450 x 545 mm
[CW 9]
On display

About the artist

Born 1901 – Died 1930

Read the full biography

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Wood’s light handling of paint is appropriate to the weather in Paris Snow Scene. As the stamp on the reverse indicates, the scene was painted on a commercially prepared canvas, the primed surface of which serves as the snow on the ground and the roofs. Some pencil sketching is visible, but this was reworked in black paint for the skeletal trees and railings and for the outlines of the houses. This transfer of drawing techniques into oil, with coloured accents within the open working, is comparable with the urban views of Maurice Utrillo. While not quite achieving the ease of the Frenchman’s work, it carries some of the nervous tension typical of Wood.

Although it dates from before Wood’s friendship with the Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Paris Snow Scene may also be usefully contrasted with Ben Nicholson’s Snowscape of the same year (in the Kettle’s Yard collection). There are obvious differences of location, but comparison of the treatment is revealing. Where the latter captured the density of the weather, Wood attempted to show the crispness that settled snow brings. The trees stand out in detail as the reversal of black to white on the ground brings a revision of the familiar. The sharpness of colour in this piece, exemplified by the blue and red cars at dead centre, call to mind Ben Nicholson’s observation that colour always seemed more intense in the company of Wood.

The view appears to be that from the window of the Parisian flat belonging to Tony Gandarillas, Wood’s mentor and companion, at the east end of the Avenue Montaigne. The artist made a number of paintings and drawings of this scene. The downward view into the street had been favoured by the Impressionists and Matisse, as it suggests an instantaneous glimpse of activity observed with impartiality. An enthusiasm for the dynamics of urban existence had supporters across the cultural spectrum in the 1920s, from newspapers to the avant-garde Purist periodical L’Esprit Nouveau, to which Wood was a subscriber.

Provenance: purchased from the artist (or the estate) by H.S. (Jim) Ede, date unknown