It's most ironic that over the weekend I pulled photos from a March 2007 British House & Garden that featured the Gothic Revival schoolhouse in Somerset belonging to flamboyant art dealer Christopher Wood. As I went online to get his website address I found an obituary from yesterday's Times for Mr Wood. He died of cancer on January 6, 2009. As a tribute to this fascinating auctioneer, art dealer and author who devoted his career to promoting the arts and artists of the Victorian period, I thought I would share photos of his home.
As well as dealing, he was a collector of drawings, Gothic furniture and pots by De Morgan, Moorcroft, Della Robbia and Dresser. “If something in the gallery does not sell, I simply take it home,” he often commented. In 1983 Mr Wood bought the Gothic Revival schoolhouse and furnished it with his customary elegance.
He took particular pains to promote Victorian watercolours, helping to bring back to prominence such artists as Helen Allingham, Albert Godwin, the Fraser family, and the late 19th-century garden painters sometimes derisively dismissed as “the Jolly Hollyhocks School”. You can read more about the beguiling life of Christopher Wood at the TimesOnline.
