Christopher Wood (1901-1930)

Wood first met Ben and Winifred Nicholson in 1926 and visited them at their home, Bankshead in Cumberland, in March 1928. Wood wrote of the visit to his mother: 'This is a dear old farmhouse. My room is lovely with great beams going up into the roof and across the room, all whitewashed and a huge window across the end, a box bed with a pretty blue cover, a table, a row of pots of tulips and little hyacinths ...' (letter dated 8 March 1928, see R. Ingleby, Christopher Wood An English Painter, London, 1995, p. 181).

Winifred Nicholson's still lifes had a significant impact on Wood's work, and on his return to Paris in April 1928 she sent him bunches of spring flowers in the post. Ingleby writes, 'Winifred's link to Wood was colour ... Their paintings came closest in their depiction of flowers. Sometimes these were formal arrangements, but they were both at their best with bunches of wild flowers arranged haphazardly in a mug, jug or a glass' (loc. cit., p. 184). The simplicity of the whitewashed background in Flowers in a white pot shows Wood's debt to Ben Nicholson's work, which ultimately resulted in Ben's white reliefs of the 1930s.