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Authors: Sebastian Faulks
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography
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scenery at all. Wood resigned, and Diaghilev commissioned Joan Miró and Max Ernst in his place.
Wood’s reaction to this setback was much tougher than his pettish response to the English Country Life episode the previous year. He ground his teeth and pressed on. The ability to do so came from his increased self-belief, which was based on the good opinion of such people as Picasso, Frank Dobson and Augustus John. Dobson and Gandarillas told him he had done the right thing. Wood had the strength of mind to digest his disappointment and convert it into something like resolve.
In London and Huyton the General Strike got under way. Troops appeared on the street; Winston Churchill, with the help ofother believers, including a keen young man called S.R. (Roy) Pawley, brought out a magazine called the British Gazette; most working men obeyed their trade union leaders as unquestioningly as they had obeyed their officers at Arras, Beaucourt and Passchendaele.
In Paris Christopher Wood saw more of Picasso by day and Jeanne Bourgoint by night. ‘I have a charming little girl friend to amuse me,’ he confided in his mother. Picasso paid him the honour of showing him all the paintings in his studio. Diaghilev’s Romeo and Juliet at last opened to the public. The Surrealists Louis Aragón and Andre Breton had organised a demonstration against the involvement of two of their number, Ernst and Miró, with the gangster-capitalist Diaghilev. Stamping and booing greeted the final scene in which Romeo, in flying goggles á la Roland Garros, swept Juliet off to elope in an aeroplane.
Wood reported joyfully that the production was a complete disaster, but in fact the interruptions gave it a certain réclame.
In London volunteers from the universities offered to drive the trams and buses; in Paris Tony Gandarillas ordered a new Delage for £350. The General Strike eventually collapsed, with the miners returning to work in similar, or in some cases worse, conditions. ‘How glad I am to hear,’ wrote Wood on 16 May, ‘that the strike is over and that everything will be normal again in England.’
It was from England that his principal encouragement was coming. Frank Dobson told him he had the greatest talent of any painter since the young Augustus John and Wood believed as much of the praise as his superstitious self-defences would allow. In Paris he had come to terms with the Diaghilev disappointment and was feeling happy with his domestic arrangements. Gandarillas did not feel threatened by Jeanne Bourgoint, and Wood valued Gandarillas’s friendship, which was still worth more to him than the considerable delights of his new girlfriend. Wood identified steadiness of domestic life as a prerequisite for hard creative work: he was seldom able to acquire tranquillity, and if he had had to struggle with small children as well as with love affairs, opium and parties, he might never have got to the easel at all.
His work in fact stagnated briefly in the summer of 1926. On a visit to London he allowed himself to accept a tiresome commission from Lady Cunard to paint some drawing-room panels. His mother came to visit him and told him that Dr Wood had been offered a practice near Salisbury. Kit urged them to leave the North West as soon as possible; ‘Huyton,’ he told her with grave but apparently unconscious understatement, ‘has no natural attractions.’
Then everything moved forward again. In August Wood went to Cornwall with Tony Gandarillas. There was a small but undistinguished artists’ colony already established at St Ives, a town Wood thought beautiful but austere. For six weeks he painted continuously, and the results were recognisable as an early version of his mature style. He learned how to finish a picture properly, and he had the feeling of illumination: much that had previously confused him was made clear. The sensation filled him with confidence. ‘I was born an artist,’ he wrote, ‘and have not just become
Wood’s reaction to this setback was much tougher than his pettish response to the English Country Life episode the previous year. He ground his teeth and pressed on. The ability to do so came from his increased self-belief, which was based on the good opinion of such people as Picasso, Frank Dobson and Augustus John. Dobson and Gandarillas told him he had done the right thing. Wood had the strength of mind to digest his disappointment and convert it into something like resolve.
In London and Huyton the General Strike got under way. Troops appeared on the street; Winston Churchill, with the help ofother believers, including a keen young man called S.R. (Roy) Pawley, brought out a magazine called the British Gazette; most working men obeyed their trade union leaders as unquestioningly as they had obeyed their officers at Arras, Beaucourt and Passchendaele.
In Paris Christopher Wood saw more of Picasso by day and Jeanne Bourgoint by night. ‘I have a charming little girl friend to amuse me,’ he confided in his mother. Picasso paid him the honour of showing him all the paintings in his studio. Diaghilev’s Romeo and Juliet at last opened to the public. The Surrealists Louis Aragón and Andre Breton had organised a demonstration against the involvement of two of their number, Ernst and Miró, with the gangster-capitalist Diaghilev. Stamping and booing greeted the final scene in which Romeo, in flying goggles á la Roland Garros, swept Juliet off to elope in an aeroplane.
Wood reported joyfully that the production was a complete disaster, but in fact the interruptions gave it a certain réclame.
In London volunteers from the universities offered to drive the trams and buses; in Paris Tony Gandarillas ordered a new Delage for £350. The General Strike eventually collapsed, with the miners returning to work in similar, or in some cases worse, conditions. ‘How glad I am to hear,’ wrote Wood on 16 May, ‘that the strike is over and that everything will be normal again in England.’
It was from England that his principal encouragement was coming. Frank Dobson told him he had the greatest talent of any painter since the young Augustus John and Wood believed as much of the praise as his superstitious self-defences would allow. In Paris he had come to terms with the Diaghilev disappointment and was feeling happy with his domestic arrangements. Gandarillas did not feel threatened by Jeanne Bourgoint, and Wood valued Gandarillas’s friendship, which was still worth more to him than the considerable delights of his new girlfriend. Wood identified steadiness of domestic life as a prerequisite for hard creative work: he was seldom able to acquire tranquillity, and if he had had to struggle with small children as well as with love affairs, opium and parties, he might never have got to the easel at all.
His work in fact stagnated briefly in the summer of 1926. On a visit to London he allowed himself to accept a tiresome commission from Lady Cunard to paint some drawing-room panels. His mother came to visit him and told him that Dr Wood had been offered a practice near Salisbury. Kit urged them to leave the North West as soon as possible; ‘Huyton,’ he told her with grave but apparently unconscious understatement, ‘has no natural attractions.’
Then everything moved forward again. In August Wood went to Cornwall with Tony Gandarillas. There was a small but undistinguished artists’ colony already established at St Ives, a town Wood thought beautiful but austere. For six weeks he painted continuously, and the results were recognisable as an early version of his mature style. He learned how to finish a picture properly, and he had the feeling of illumination: much that had previously confused him was made clear. The sensation filled him with confidence. ‘I was born an artist,’ he wrote, ‘and have not just become
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