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Lot Essay
In March 1921, at the invitation of the influential collector and patron, Alphonse Kahn, Wood moved to Paris and settled in Kahn's house at 41 Bois de Boulogne. Soon after his arrival Wood enrolled at the Académie Julian and the Grande Chaumière atelier, then at the Académie Montparnasse. Kahn also helped Wood to acquire a studio in the rue des Saints Pères, which runs adjacent to the left bank of the Seine. From 1924, Wood began sharing this studio with the French artist and poet Jean Cocteau.
Wood completed several paintings which show bridges over the River Seine but, stylistically, they are all quite different. Eric Newton, in the wider context of Wood's ouevre, suggests that this constant series of new twists to his artistic vision would not have been possible had he not been to Paris:
'He painted swiftly and without hesitation, as though he had merely to obey the commands of his inner eye ... that is not typical of the English artist's way of thinking. If Wood had not lived a cosmopolitan existence, with Paris as his headquarters, I doubt whether he would have achieved that confident grip of his craft as early as he did. The series of decisions and accidents that cut him off from England and threw him into the cross-currents of continental life set his art free' (see E. Newton, Christopher Wood, London, 1959, p. 18).
Wood completed several paintings which show bridges over the River Seine but, stylistically, they are all quite different. Eric Newton, in the wider context of Wood's ouevre, suggests that this constant series of new twists to his artistic vision would not have been possible had he not been to Paris:
'He painted swiftly and without hesitation, as though he had merely to obey the commands of his inner eye ... that is not typical of the English artist's way of thinking. If Wood had not lived a cosmopolitan existence, with Paris as his headquarters, I doubt whether he would have achieved that confident grip of his craft as early as he did. The series of decisions and accidents that cut him off from England and threw him into the cross-currents of continental life set his art free' (see E. Newton, Christopher Wood, London, 1959, p. 18).