 |
| Christopher Wood Angelfish, London Aquarium 1930 oil on cardboard Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums |
" . . . not trying to see things and paint them through the eyes and experience of a man of forty or fifty or whatever they may be, but rather through the eyes of the smallest child who sees nothing except those things which would strike him as being the most important . . ."
– Christopher Wood in a 1922 letter to his mother
 |
| Christopher Wood Battersea Park, London before 1930 oil on canvas Dorset County Museum |
 |
| Christopher Wood Zebra and Parachute 1930 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
"Zebra and Parachute is one of Wood's last paintings. The image brings together an unusual collection of elements that give the work a surrealist flavour. A zebra appears against the backdrop of a modernist building. The animal stands on the building's roof terrace near a raised flowerbed. The distinctive lines of the architecture, which include strong diagonals produced by a zig-zagging ramp and the cylindrical forms of two chimneys or towers in the background, suggest an almost abstract arrangement that contrasts with the altogether different pattern produced by the zebra's stripes. A dark shadow falls just in front of the zebra, casting the right-hand zone of the terrace into semi-darkness and adding to the mysterious atmosphere of the image. In the sky above this scene, a parachute is descending. The tiny figure that dangles in the parachute harness appears to be limp and lifeless. The distinctive architecture of the building in Zebra and Parachute identifies it as the Villa Savoye, near Paris, designed by Le Corbusier (1887-1975). The villa, begun in 1928, was finished in 1931, and construction was well underway at the time Wood produced this painting. . . . Along with this work, Wood produced at the same time the closely related painting Tiger and Arc de Triomphe [directly below]. In it, he set up a similar juxtaposition of the exotic and the man-made, this time placing a lazily sprawling tiger and a sitting leopard against a wooded background with a view of the Arc de Triomphe monument behind them. Both paintings are reminiscent of the work of Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), known particularly for the depiction of animals in jungle settings in a naїve style."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery
 |
| Christopher Wood Tiger and Arc de Triomphe 1930 oil on canvas Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
 |
| Christopher Wood The Jumping Boy, Arundel, West Sussex 1929 oil on canvas Museums Sheffield |
 |
| Christopher Wood The Steps, Chelsea 1927 oil on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
 |
| Christopher Wood The Rainbow 1927 oil on canvas Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate |
 |
| Christopher Wood Le Plage, Hotel Ty-Med, Tréboul, France 1930 oil on panel Museums Sheffield |
 |
| Christopher Wood Landscape near Vence 1927 oil on canvas National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
 |
| Christopher Wood Landscape at Vence, Little White House 1927 oil on canvas Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge |
 |
| Christopher Wood Cassis, France 1927 oil on canvas Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art |
 |
| Christopher Wood Bankshead, Cumberland 1928 oil on canvas, mounted on panel Rugby Art Gallery and Museum |
 |
| Christopher Wood Street in Paris 1926 oil on panel Southampton City Art Gallery |
 |
| Christopher Wood The Porte d'Honneur and the Petit Palais, Paris before 1930 oil on panel National Trust for Scotland, Brodie Castle |
 |
| Christopher Wood Flowers in a Black Jug before 1930 oil on canvas Leeds Museums and Galleries |