Wood , (John) Christopher [Kit] , 1901-1930 , painter

Christopher 'Kit' Wood was born in 1901. He was educated at Marlborough College and studied architecture at Liverpool University. In 1921 he enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris, then at the Grande Chaumire. He met a number of European artists, including Jean Cocteau (with whom he shared a studio) and Picasso, whilst in Paris and during visits to Europe and north Africa. In 1926 he met Ben and Winifred Nicholson in London and stayed with them in Cornwall, where he and Ben Nicholson discovered the work of the naive painter Alfred Wallis (in 1928). A member of the Seven and Five Society, he also exhibited with the London Group. His best work was completed in Brittany in the final two years of his life. He was killed by a train at Salisbury railway station in 1930. Frosca Munster, a Russian emigre, met Wood in Paris in 1928. They began a relationship and she stayed with him and the Nicholsons in Cornwall.

The first monograph on Wood was Eric Newton's Christopher Wood, 1901-30 (1938). The most recent biography is Richard Ingleby's Christopher Wood: An English Painter (1995).