
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
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Sold for £17,500 inc. premium
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Head of UK and Ireland

Head of Department

Director
PROVENANCE:
Terrence Kennedy
With The Redfern Gallery, London, 9 November 1999, where acquired by
Peter Cotterill
Private Collection, U.K.
LITERATURE:
Probably Eric Newton, Christopher Wood 1901-1930, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, p.81, cat.no.601 (as Sailors in a French Port)
Richard Ingleby, Christopher Wood: An English Painter, Allison & Busby, London, 1955, pl.4 (col.ill)
Villefranche on the French Riviera was a favoured playground for the 1920s haute bohème. Amongst its most notorious frequenters, including Coco Chanel, Scott Fitzgerald and Isadora Duncan, was the poet-impresario and artist Jean Cocteau. Cocteau would hold residence in the port's Hotel Welcome where in 1924 the young Christopher 'Kit' Wood was also vacationing. Wood immediately became infatuated with Cocteau and his hedonistic existence. The pair embarked on a fast and close relationship, sharing a studio on their return to Paris, mutually benefiting from each other's advice and critique. However Cocteau's affection quickly moved on and early the following year he embarked on a new relationship with Jean Bourgoint. Whatever rejection Wood felt was quickly overcome as all three men remained friends, indeed Wood was later introduced to and became romantically entwined with Jean's sister Jeanne, who modeled for many of his most sensuous pictures. The beautiful Bourgoint siblings formed an infamous pair whose flippant and at times peculiar affections were poetically interpreted in Cocteau's 1929 novel 'Les Enfants Terribles'.
The present lot, depicting sailors on the docks before the Welcome and its well-known pleasures, is inscribed 'a' Jean B au Kit' suggesting that it may well have been a gift from Wood to Jean Bourgoint.