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Christopher Wood 1901-1930
Pill Creek, St Feoch, Cornwall 1928 Oil on canvas 14 ½ x 21 inches (37 x 53.5 cm) PROVENANCE Given by the Artist to Winifred Nicholson; Private Collection. This is among the most historically important works by Christopher Wood to have come to market in recent times. It was painted on the famous expedition to Cornwall made by Wood and Ben and Winifred Nicholson in 1928 when they ‘discovered’ Alfred Wallis. This meeting is generally accepted as a pivotal moment in the evolution of modern art in Britain. Nicholson himself saw it as critical for his development as an artists and openly acknowledged that at this stage he was following Wood’s surging artistic development. 
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Ben and Winifred Nicholson went to stay with their patron Marcus Brumwell at Feoch, who had constructed a modernist house there. Wood followed and stayed at rooms taken in the village for him by his friends. The painting of Pill Creek was one of only a very small number of canvases Wood completed in Cornwall in 1928, and he gave this one to Winifred, to whom he was very close. For a period of three months previously he hadn’t painted at all, almost as if it was a hiatus before a great leap forward in the development of his art. Wood described the location eloquently to his Mother, writing to her: 'This is a very beautiful place, a little creek with pine woods and white yachts at the end of the large inlet with Falmouth at the head. We lead a quiet life … we do a good bit of sailing and have taken part in two regattas … It makes one feel so fit sailing. I painted a good picture today so hope I may paint a few more before I go.' (3 September 1928) 'Each picture seems an advance’, he wrote to her a month later, ‘It’s a wonderful life’. |
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Christopher Wood in Cornwall 1928
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