Christopher Wood, who died on 6 January 2009 aged 67, devoted his career to promoting
the art and artists of the Victorian period.
Christopher Edward Russell Wood was raised in Newcastle upon Tyne, the eldest of
three sons. His father ran the family business, Alexander & Wood, a successful and
long-established firm of wholesale fishmongers. Childhood visits to his paternal
grandmother, who lived in a large Victorian house filled with period furnishings,
may have been a formative influence on the young Wood’s tastes. He was educated at
Sedbergh School, Cumbria, and at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read History.
After university he went straight to Christie’s, where he was appointed a director
at the age of 27, the youngest director in the auction house’s history. In 1976 he
left to set up as a dealer. For a while he ran the Alexander Gallery in Sloane Street
for the Iranian-born businessman and collector Parviz Amir Parviz, briefly opening
a branch in Tehran. He then set up independently, and in 1979 opened premises in
Motcomb Street, London. In 1988 his business was bought by Malletts of Bond Street,
London, of which he became a director. After a while the Motcomb Street premises
were closed and Wood moved to the upper floors of the Bond Street building. In 1995
he moved once more, taking offices as a private dealer and consultant in Bury Street,
St James’s and latterly St James’s Place. From 1999 to 2004 Wood was one of the experts
that appeared regularly on the popular BBC television programme The Antiques Roadshow.
Christopher Wood was also a prolific author in his field. He produced, with Christopher
Newall, the now two-volume Dictionary of Victorian Painters, first published in 1971.
His other works include Victorian Panorama: paintings of Victorian life (1976); The
Pre-Raphaelites (1981); Olympian Dreamers (1983); Tissot (1986); Painting Gardens:
English watercolour 1850-1914 (with Penelope Hobhouse, 1988); Paradise Lost: paintings
of English country life and landscape 1850-1914 (1988); Victorian Painting in Oils
and Watercolours (1996); The Great Art Boom 1970-1997 (1997); Burne-Jones (1988);
Victorian Painting (1999); Fairies in Victorian Art (2000); and William Powell Frith,
RA: painter of modern life (2006).
Christopher Wood was utterly honest and reliable in his business affairs, and future
generations will regard a Wood provenance as offering great peace of mind.
Wood was twice married, first in 1967 to Sarah, with whom he had two sons and a daughter,
and in 2004 to Rosemary. He is survived by both wives and his children.
