Ernest Greenwood was born in Welling, Kent, on 12 February 1913, the sixth of seven children of the shipping engineer, Owen Charles Greenwood, and his wife, Annie (née Bradshaw). His father died when he was very young and the family then lived in poverty.
Greenwood was educated at Gravesend Grammar School and, from 1927, studied at Gravesend School of Art. In 1931, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, in London, where he studied painting under William Rothenstein, John Nash, Alan Sorrell and Gilbert Spencer: When it was agreed that Sorrell should produce a series of murals for the public library in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, Greenwood was taken on as his assistant. A travelling scholarship, in 1934, enabled Greenwood to spend time at the British School at Rome, and in Paris and Copenhagen. A year later, he returned to the RCA, in order to study etching and engraving under Malcolm Osborne and Robert Sargent Austin.
Whie at the RCA, Greenwood met his future wife, Eileen Messenger, who was a student in the design school.
Their first joint exhibition was held at her lodgings in Redcliffe Road, Chelsea, and they both became art teachers. They married in 1939, and lived initially with her family at 'Glen Gairn', Norrys Road, Cockfosters, East Barnet. They would have one daughter, Dorelia (who would exhibit a lithograph at the Royal Academy in 1964).
In 1941, Greenwood was conscripted into the Royal Artillery. A few months later, he was transferred to the Army Education Corps School. By the end of the war, he was working at the Army Rehabilitation School in Berlin. His experiences of that city in ruins inspired him to produce a series of paintings on the theme of resurrection.
Following demobilisation in 1946, Greenwood was appointed art master at the Technical High School for Girls in Chislehurst, Kent. In that year, he painted a set of 8 mural panels on Biblical subjects for Coopers, a Georgian mansion in Chislehurst Park (now in Bromley Central Library). Soon after, his school invited him to paint a set of 15 mural panels on the themes of Christmas and Easter. (Completed in 1951, the panels were dismantled when the school was later modified.)
From 1947, Greenwood held solo shows, and joint shows with his wife, at Kensington Art Gallery. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the New English Art Club. By 1950, he and his family were living at Bridge Cottage, Otford, near Sevenoaks, Kent. In 1953, he was appointed an inspector of art education for the London County Council. In 1960, Greenwood and is wife bought Brushings Farm House, a listed sixteenth-century house in the village of Broad Street, northeast of Maidstone. While they would spend the next few years restoring it with care, they did not neglect their work as artists. Focussing increasingly on landscape watercolours, Greenwood became an active member of a number of artists' societies, being elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours (1962) and taking the position of President of both the Hesketh Hubbard Art Society (1960-65) and the Guild of Kent Artists (1966). He also held solo shows in London, including one at Walker's Galleries (1960) and another, of 'French and English Landscapes', at the galleries of the Federation of British Artists (1965).
In 1966, Greenwood became an inspector of art education for the Kent Education Committee, a position he retained until 1973. Over that period, he held significant exhibitions in Kent, including a joint show with Hugh Casson in Canterbury (1970) and a retrospective at the New Metropole Arts Centre, Folkestone (1972). During the run of the latter, he met the new owner of the New Metropole, the property developer, Sir Gerald Glover, and established a good relationship with him.
Elected a full member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1973, Greenwood became its President in 1976, and remained in the position for the following eight years.According to Simon Fenwick, the former RWS archivist, it was Greenwood who secured a new home for the society, and more generally its future, by alerting Sir Gerald Glover of its need for a new premises. Then involved in the development of the South Bank, Glover was able to incorporate such premises in the project. As a result, the Bankside Gallery was opened in 1980. While President of the RWS, Greenwood still found time to travel, often in his role as a lecturer in art appreciation on Swan Hellenic cruises.
In later years, Greenwood continued to paint and exhibit, both in England and in Arizona, in the United States, where he had friends. In 1994, he accepted an invitation to paint decorations for the Judges' Chambers at Canterbury Crown Court. Three years later, he held a retrospective at County Hall, Maidstone.
In about 2003, Greenwood became confined to a wheelchair, so he and his wife, Eileen, moved to sheltered accommodation at Lakeside in Hothfield, near Ashford. While there, he wrote his memoir, The Last of Seven: Reflections of a Life in Art (2006). He died in Ashford on 17 May 2009, a year after his wife.
His work is represented in the collections of the Royal Watercolour Society and numerous public collections, including the Ben Uri Gallery & Museum and Bromley Central Library.
Further reading:
Simon Fenwick, 'Ernest Greenwood' [obituary], Independent, 3 September 2009
