Suffolk Harvest Field

John Barlow Wood, was born at Etruria, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire on 10 November 1862, son of John Wood (1826-1906), a china warehouseman, and his wife Elizabeth née Barlow (1829-1905), who retired to Woodbridge, Suffolk. Young John began his career as a ceramic painter for Minton before becoming a professional portrait and landscape artist. He worked in Oxford in 1894 and at Woodbridge, Suffolk in 1897 and in 1901, an artist of Drybridge Lodge, Woodbridge, Suffolk. His father died at Woodbridge in 1906 when John Barlow moved to Ipswich. In early 1911, a 48 year old artist, staying at the Blue Anchor Inn, Brook Street, Connington, Somerset and later that year married at Ipswich, Constance Emily Fry (1876-1930), sister of Edward Ransome Fry [q.v.] and Robert Douglas Fry [q.v.], and they moved to Kendal where John was a member of the Lake Artists Society 1914-1931 but on the death of his wife at Briarley, Kentrigg, Kendal on 23 February 1930, he returned to live at Ipswich. In 1939, a widower and a retired artist, living at The Surgery, Weobley, Herefordshire. He exhibited Early Spring at the Royal Academy also exhibiting at the Royal Society of Artists; Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and the Society of British Artists 1894-1911, from Oxford in 1894, Woodbridge 1897 and Ipswich in 1905. A member of Ipswich Art Club from 1895 until 1927 and at their centenary exhibition in 1974 his watercolour River Scene with Barge was on show. Wood returned to live at Fleet Holme, Lowgill, Kendal and it seems probably that he suffered from bipolar affective disorder, a mental illness, and he died whilst a patient at The Retreat, a Quaker psychiatric hospital at Neslington Road, York on 4 August 1949, aged 86 and buried at Kendal.