While at Liverpool University, Christopher Wood (1901–1930) met Augustus John, who encouraged him to become a painter. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1921 and travelled widely in Europe and North Africa. By the mid-1920s, he was an established artist, influenced by his friendship with Ben and Winifred Nicholson and by the naïve, expressive style of the Cornish painter Alfred Wallis.