Mike Jackson, Owner:
Robert Wood (1889-1979)
Items for sale at Legend Fine Arts
Robert W. Wood was born in Sandgate, England, near the famous white cliffs of Dover, on the coast of Kent. His father, W. L. Wood, was a Victorian painter and Robert Wood displayed a facility for art at an early age. As a young man, he studied painting in nearby Folkstone. After service in the Royal Army, Wood and his friend, Claude Waters, emigrated to America.
Initially, Wood settled in Illinois and worked as a hired hand on a farm belonging to Water's uncle. Then he struck out on his own, living the life of an itinerant painter. He traveled as a hobo, hopping freight trains and selling or bartering small paintings to support himself along the way. When times were hard, he worked at whatever job was available. After seventeen years in Texas, Wood pulled up stakes again and established himself in the coastal town of Laguna Beach, California. Laguna had been an artist colony since early in the century and some of the painters of the California Plein-Air School were still active when Wood settled there. In Laguna, he was recognized for his landscapes and marine paintings. For the rest of his career, Wood's paintings of the California coast remained a significant part of his oeuvre. Living in Laguna for seven years, Robert Wood became an active member of the Laguna Art Association and an exhibitor at the annual Laguna Festival of the Arts. Robert Wood was a prolific painter and everything that he painted found a ready market. He left a legacy of thousands of paintings, for his career lasted almost seventy years. Most Americans remember Wood for his later, more impressionistic works, painted when he led the print market in sales, but many collectors prefer his earlier works. The paintings from the 1930's and 1940's were generally softer and more delicate, closer in style to the English landscape painters of the 19th century than to those of his American contemporaries. In the 1950's, his work began to take on a looser, more painterly quality. By the mid-1960's, he was working in a higher key, with even broader brushwork and bolder colors.