ROBERT WILLIAM WOOD (American, 1889-1979). Country Field of Bluebonnets with House. Oil on canvas . 22 x 28 inches (55.9...

Description

ROBERT WILLIAM WOOD (American, 1889-1979)
Country Field of Bluebonnets with House
Oil on canvas
22 x 28 inches (55.9 x 71.1 cm)
Signed lower left: Robert Wood

Robert William Wood was born at Sandgate, England in 1889. He served in the British
Army before immigrating to the United States in 1911. After working initially as a farmhand
in Illinois, he crossed the United States selling small paintings, working odd jobs, and riding
the rails until arriving in Los Angeles in 1912. By the end of that year he was in Florida and
married to Eyssel del Wagoner. The newlyweds settled in Ohio, but during World War I
moved to Seattle.

Wood first came to Texas in 1924. When his paintings were shown in store windows in Dallas,
Houston, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio they drew crowds. After settling in San Antonio.
Wood studied with Jose Arpa, who helped nurture the young artist's natural talent. Wood
exhibited a painting in the 1928 San Antonio Competitive, signaling his arrival as a Texas
artist. With loose brushwork, powerful color, and a casual quality, Wood's paintings from
around 1930s are his most impressionistic. In 1931 after his mentor Arpa returned to Spain,
Wood moved to an area near Helotes Creek, northwest of San Antonio. About this time he
codified his Hill Country landscapes into a formula that served him well the remainder of his
career. While based in San Antonio, Wood made sketching trips to Colorado, Wyoming, and
California. However, Wood's most spontaneous, plein-air paintings were executed in Texas,
and are those most highly prized by collectors.

About 1941, Wood relocated to Laguna Beach, California, where an art colony had formed
around 1900, and became recognized for his California coastal scenes. Wood moved again
around 1948, this time to Woodstock, New York, which had been an artist's colony since
the 1870s. Drawn to the fall colors of the Hudson River landscape, Wood's Woodstock
canvases attracted the attention of calendar houses. Reproductions of his Woodstock-area
paintings soon became readily available to the public. Wood returned to Laguna Beach
in the early 1950s and remained a California resident for the rest of his life. Robert Wood
remains one of the most widely reproduced American artists. The breadth of his subjects as
he traveled from one end of the country to another, also helped make him one of the most
popular American landscape painters.

More information about ROBERT WILLIAM WOOD. See also: Wood, Robert William, Robert Wood, G. Day, Trebor, Robert William Wood Artist.

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