Signed and dated l.l.: F.Wood/32

Tempera on panel

Exhibited: London, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, 1937, no.4; Royal Society of British Artists, 1937

Literature: Marshall Hall, The Artists of Northumbria, Bristol, 1982, p.374-5

Frank Wood was an accomplished painter, watercolourist and muralist who was a central part of the art scene in Sunderland in the middle part of the twentieth century. Particularly adept as a painter in tempera he was chairman of the Sunderland Art Club for many years. The present work depicts Wood’s colleague and fellow club member John Summers (a former Naval engineer and himself a fine commercial artist and etcher) and is a remarkable tribute to a fellow artist and an exceptional example of tempera painting of the mid twentieth century. A major retrospective of Wood’s work was held at Sunderland Art Gallery in 1995.