429. JAMES WOOD (1889-1975). A FOLIO OF DRAWINGS.

Comprising figure subjects, informal portraits, still lives, landscapes and other themes, one signed and dated 1928, principally pencil, some charcoal, pastel and watercolour, various sizes (approx 50 leaves)

Provenance: By descent in the family of the artist.

James Wood was born in Southport, Lancashire and read history at Cambridge University. He subsequently studied in Paris and Munich and worked on battleship camouflage in World War I. In the post-War years, Wood focused upon aesthetics. He developed a growing interest in colour theory, which became an enduring fascination for him throughout his life, and he held a firm devotion to Kandinsky’s theories. Ever eager to expand his intellectual horizons, Wood learnt Persian, studied the art of Persia and became an adviser to the Persian government. He exhibited his work sporadically, but rarely after the mid 1950s. He moved between the hubbub of Hampstead; the idyllic remoteness of a cottage in Monmouthshire; and the home of his artist wife, Elisabeth Robertson, in Gloucestershire. Wood was friends with Sir Stanley Spencer but Wood’s later work evinces an awareness of some Pop Art sensibilities.