Robert William Wood

“Mountain Scene”

1941

Robert William Wood (1889–1979) is often considered to be among America’s most prolific artists because of the extraordinary number of landscapes he painted of the country’s greatest natural treasures — scenes as diverse as the California coast, the Rocky Mountains and springtime in the Texas bluebonnets. The gifted painter worked for nearly 60 years, often completing one painting a day.

Today, Robert Wood paintings are very popular for those seeking to bring luminous landscapes into their homes.

Wood was born in Kent, England, and emigrated in 1910 to the United States, where he spent his whole career. He was fond of plein air painting, which refers to the practice of painting outdoors, and when Wood moved to California from Texas in 1941, the last of the painters associated with the California Plein-Air School were still exhibiting but the popularity of the movement was dwindling. Wood’s paintings contain a great deal of detail and delicacy, but toward the end of his career in the mid-1950s, the artist began painting in a more Impressionistic style, with looser, bolder brushstrokes.

The critically acclaimed art movements that arose during Wood’s lifetime — Abstract Expressionism and Pop art among them — were far removed from the kind of traditional art that Wood practiced, and he did not seek to promote himself. But despite the artist’s lack of critical success, Wood was immensely popular and became a household name. Millions of color reproductions of his paintings, which have been praised for their depictions of natural light and enchanting use of color, have been sold over the years and can be found in homes all over the United States.

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