Three Bridges by Greenwood

         John Frederick Greenwood (UK, 1885-1954) followed a pretty standard artist trajectory for his time.  He studied at art school, had some pieces shown in prestigious shows, illustrated some books, taught, and had membership in various wood-engraving societies.  (Some sources spell his middle name Frederic.)  I toss off this somewhat flippant biography not to be dismissive, however, but because the biography doesn’t seem to me to be the interesting thing about his work.  I like his work for its own sake.

        Because these are wood engravings, they have that characteristic wood engraving look of very fine white lines, with lots of cross-hatching and other fine patterns.  Each of these three pieces has a different balance of black and white, but they all feature bridges of the British countryside.  The first one is my favorite, I think, although it might be a tie with number 2.  At any rate, I really like the textures of the bridge.

        I find the water in the first two pieces especially interesting, because I would never think to depict a river flowing across the paper with those fine straight vertical lines.  It certainly works, though.  The third piece shows water more the way I would expect it and be inclined to do it myself.  (Having just made my own block print of a bridge over a river, I recently had to give the matter a lot of thought.  I wish I’d looked at Greenwood’s pieces when I was working on mine, to give me more ideas about different possibilities.)  In this second piece I especially like the buildings to the left of the bridge, while the rocks at the bottom would have been very helpful for me in my own carving.

        The third piece is more geometric, with straighter straight lines, more angular angles, and more geometric crosshatching - all except that wavier water.  Because I don’t have exact dates on all of these pieces, I don’t know whether the difference in style between them represents a shift over time, or whether Greenwood simply experimented with slightly different looks in different pieces.

        There’s something very satisfying and attractive about bridges, and these are a wonderful selection of wood-engravings depicting them.

[Pictures: Grassington Bridge, Morkshire, wood engraving by John Frederick Greenwood, ca. 1924 (Image from The Annex Galleries);

Durham Castle and Framwellgate Bridge, wood engraving by Greenwood (Image from The Annex Galleries);

The Wharfedale Bridge, wood engraving by Greenwood from The New Woodcut by Malcolm C. Salaman, 1930.]