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Lot Essay
In the spring of 1926 Wood visited Monte Carlo to work on the Ballets Russe production of Romeo and Juliet. Wood had been commissioned by Diaghilev to produce designs for the scenery for a ballet that would be based on a rehearsal for the production rather than an actual performance of Romeo and Juliet. The collaboration was not a success and Wood was effectively sacked from the production (see R. Ingleby, Christopher Wood An English Painter, London, 1995, pp. 121-27).
Eric Newton was the author of the catalogue of Wood's paintings produced after his death by the Redfern Gallery. In his introduction (op. cit.) he summed up the difficulties in writing about the artist: 'I am conscious of writing about an artist whose work, remarkable though it is, does not sum him up. His pictures seem in some odd way to have been a mere accident: an essential part of the man, but not the core of him. I am even glad not to have known him, for strangely enough, those who knew him find it difficult to think of him as an artist at all. To them he was just 'Kit Wood', a friend whose gestures, habits of mind and body, qualities, even foibles, they never tire of affectionately describing. Ask them how he painted, what were his hopes, fears, methods, ambitions as an artist, and they become vague and inarticulate'.
Eric Newton was the author of the catalogue of Wood's paintings produced after his death by the Redfern Gallery. In his introduction (op. cit.) he summed up the difficulties in writing about the artist: 'I am conscious of writing about an artist whose work, remarkable though it is, does not sum him up. His pictures seem in some odd way to have been a mere accident: an essential part of the man, but not the core of him. I am even glad not to have known him, for strangely enough, those who knew him find it difficult to think of him as an artist at all. To them he was just 'Kit Wood', a friend whose gestures, habits of mind and body, qualities, even foibles, they never tire of affectionately describing. Ask them how he painted, what were his hopes, fears, methods, ambitions as an artist, and they become vague and inarticulate'.