Christopher Wood & Peter Iden

 

On Saturday 24 September I visited a very fine exhibition of Christopher Wood’s paintings in the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Many familiar pictures, and some unfamiliar ones. I was particularly drawn to an early painting of flowers in a vase, presented as a black silhouette against a medium dark background. Disconcertingly, in the middle of the black shape of the foliage thrusting out of the vase, there is a cluster of carefully observed florets. The result is a bit like Magritte, but much more sensuous. Naturally (as is always the case) there wasn’t a post-card of the picture you particularly want to remember; I’m sorry I can’t show it to you. Maybe, in these digital days, you could buy an image for a small sum, generating fees for the gallery and the copyright holders.

 

Talking of small sums, it costs £10 to get into the Pallant House Gallery, which will inevitably cut out many people, and casual visiting.

 

On view in the Gallery bookshop there was a blazing cluster of Peter Iden reproductions flanking one of an Ivon Hitchens landscape. (Peter would have been pleased with the company). You can only see this work in reproduction in the bookshop: there is none in the Gallery. Here are some samples. About a mile away is the small room in a small flat where Peter did all his late abstracted Downland landscapes. It’s a neat illustration of the biblical adage, that a prophet has no honour in his own country