Lucy Wertheim
Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, where acquired by Leonard Elmhirst, May 1932 for £30.0.0
Gifted by Dorothy Elmhirst to The Dartington Hall Trust, 25th March 1965

London, Wertheim Gallery, Paintings by the Late Christopher Wood, 4th - 27th February 1931, cat. no.28 (as Crocuses) (probably);
London, The New Burlington Galleries, Christopher Wood, 3rd March - 2nd April 1938, cat. no.223;
Dartington Hall, Paintings, Sculpture, Furniture Belonging to Mr & Mrs Elmhirst , 1951, cat. no.11 (as Purple Crocus);
St Ives, Tate, Partnership and Practice, November 1998 - April 1999;
Dartington Hall, High Cross House, c2000 - 2010.

Eric Newton (ed.), Christopher Wood, Redfern Gallery, London, 1938, cat. ൲no.326, p.73.

Original canvas. Generally the work is in good original condition with areas of strong impasto. There are one or two minor areas of paint separation, including to the pot and the pipe in the foreground. Ultraviolet light reveals pigments which fluoresce that are apparently the hand of the artist. Held under glass in a stained wood frame; unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Still lifes of flowers appear consistently through Wood's career and range from the more consciously staged and showy to the more informal and intimate arrangements such as the present work. Against a plain background, a modest pot of crocuses sits upon some paper, next to his customary pipe and a box of matches. It presents a different mood to bolder compositions such as Flowers on a Chair with Pipe and Paper (formerly in the collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough, sold in these rooms, 11^th November 2009, lot 2, for £277,250). Crocuses in a Flower-pot is a quieter painting♏, characteristically simp🎉le and direct in its treatment.

In 1928, the year of Crocuses, Wood had spent time with Ben and Winifred Nicholson at Banks Head, their house in Cumberland; 'Inspiration ran high and flew backwards and forwards from one to the other' (Winifred Nicholson, Kit, unpublished memoir, Tate Gallery Archive 723.100, p.18). Here Wood watched Winifred work on her flower still lifes and while he does not seem to have painted any himself during his visit, the memory stayed with him. When he returned to Paris in April, he asked Winifred to send him bunches of spring flowers in the post. Wood and Winifred's painting styles came closest in their depiction of flowers, and Crocuses is suggestive of 𝓀;their&nbsܫp;intimate personal and creative relationship.

The present work is inscribed on the reverse:

Painted by my son Christopher Wood. 1928/ Clara d. Wood