Christopher Wood (1901-1930) was an English painter born in Knowsley, near Liverpool. At Liverpool University, Wood met Augustus John, who encouraged him to be a painter. The French collector Alphonse Kahn invited him to Paris in 1920.

From 1921 he trained as a painter at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he met Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Georges Auric and Diaghilev. He travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924. 

The distinct areas of coloured surfaces in this painting of Vence on the Cote d'Azur reveal the influence of Cézanne and Cubism. In the 1920s, Christopher Wood travelled extensively through France and Italy and encountered Modernism through his friendships with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau.

Wood wanted to distance himself from his formal art training and to paint with the naïve and simple vision of a child. A year after he painted Vence, Wood and Ben Nicholson visited St Ives together and ''discovered'' the paintings of the retired fisherman Alfred Wallis.