Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Joash Woodrow artist

Joash Woodrow was born into a Jewish family in Leeds, England in 1927, the son of Polish-immigrant parents. He trained at Leeds College of Art before winning a scholarship to study drawing and painting at the Royal College of Art in London. After graduating, he suffered a nervous breakdown, returning to his home in Leeds and gradually withdrawing into a lone life of intense output. He produced landscapes and cityscapes (especially panoramas of inner-city Leeds), portraits, still lifes and collages.  He received critical acclaim late in life with his first solo exhibition held at 108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate, Yorkshire in 2002.

Born: 1926 Leeds, England

Died: 2006 Manchester, England


Biography

Painter Joash Woodrow was born into a Jewish family in Leeds, England on 6 April 1927, one of eight sons and two daughters; his parents, both from a Polish-immigrant background, had married in Boston, USA. On moving to England, the family settled in Leeds. Woodrow showed a precocious artistic talent, producing detailed drawings when he was only seven years old. He trained at Leeds College of Art before serving in the army as a cartographer in Egypt (1945–8). Afterwards, he won a scholarship to study drawing and painting at the Royal College of Art, London (1950–53), where he was taught by Carel Weight, Ruskin Spear and Robert Buhler, who considered him one of their most promising students. Fellow students included Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and novelist Len Deighton. One of his few friends from the RCA was artist Cyril Satorsky, who recalled that ‘there was something Fauvish about his manipulation of paint that gave it a rich, fat quality’ (Wullschlager 2007, p. 18). Artist Rodrigo Moynihan stated that ‘His painting has a mature richness of colour and expression. He is immensely serious and hard working and, I feel, will be among the few students who will make a name for himself’ (108 Fine Art Gallery).
 
Despite this promising beginning, after graduating Woodrow suffered a nervous breakdown, returning home to Chapel Allerton, Leeds to live with his mother and brother, Israel in 1955. He began working from home, in increasing solitude, producing drawings and paintings with remarkable single-mindedness. Woodrow remained an essentially ‘private’ artist and his family were his principal audience. Following the death of his mother (1962) and brother (1978), he became more prolific, painting increasingly large-scale works. He gradually withdrew into a lone life of intense output, but he also went out in search of inspiration, to the ballet, theatre, pubs and on drawing expeditions to the Yorkshire coast. The many surviving sketches and notebooks filled with drawings demonstrate that he often spent hours or days out sketching, although it seems that these works were rarely made as studies for paintings. As observed by Robert Clark in The Guardian, Woodrow’s isolation ‘limited his painterly vocabulary to a somewhat naive or eccentric expressionism, his single mindedness of spirit imbued the overall body of work with a convincing autobiographical cohesion […], there's an atmospheric gentleness and gestural grace about Woodrow that is utterly his own’ (Clark 2007, p. 37).

Despite his isolation, however, Woodrow kept up with artistic developments and his work revealed the most disparate influences, including Picasso, Art Brut, Cobra, Tachisme and Sydney Nolan. Although he usually did not sign or date his paintings, they roughly fell into ‘periods’: domestic life during the 1940s; smaller landscapes of the 1950s; powerful portrait heads of the 1960s; semi-abstract still lifes and figure paintings indebted to Picasso, and urban landscapes in the 1970s. Driven by an urgent impulse to create, he often resorted to utilising scrap materials, ranging from advertising boards to discarded pages of old journals. He also nailed scraps of potato sacking darned with wool to stretchers tacked together from bits of wood and even tree branches. As observed by Laura Gascoigne, this resulted in ‘a surface that heaves and bubbles with energy, while somehow keeping the colour alive. Woodrow’s most exciting works are built rather than painted; and, despite their dodgy construction, clearly built to last’ (The Spectator).  Woodrow's subjects included still lives and cityscapes – especially panoramas of inner-city Leeds with its mix of modern development and peculiar local detail. In his landscapes he often combined raw, natural elements with traces of human presence: electrical wires, lamp posts, and other objects, while his collages incorporated torn pieces of musical score to represent buildings, animals and landscapes. A recurring subject was picket-fenced allotments – such as in Ben Uri’s White Tree and Yellow Fence (1980, Ben Uri Collection) – inspired by Gledhow Vallery Allotments near his house.

 In 2000 more than 3,000 drawings, watercolours, collages and prints, spanning a 50-year career, were rescued after a fire at his home. The following year, Woodrow moved into sheltered accommodation in Prestwich, near Manchester. He received critical acclaim late in life, holding his first solo exhibition in 2002 at 108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate, north Yorkshire, which subsequently staged several exhibitions of his works. Woodrow’s first major retrospective, entitled A Lost Artist Comes into the Light, was held at Manchester Art Gallery in 2005, touring to Ben Uri the same year. Joash Woodrow died in Manchester, England on 15 February 2006 and in 2009 a retrospective, Joash Woodrow, 1927-2006 was presented by The Fine Art Society, London. Woodrow's work is represented in UK public collections, including Leeds City Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and  the Ben Uri Collection. A play about him, entitled The Resonance of Seclusion, by Liz Postlethwaite, was produced at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester in 2011.

Related books

  • Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013) p. 45
  • Paul Taylor, ‘The Secret Artist’, Manchester Evening News, 27 February 2013, p. 34
  • Apocalypse: Unveiling a Lost Masterpiece by Marc Chagall (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2010)
  • Philip Vann, 'Perspectives: Withdrawal into Reality: The Art of Joash Woodrow', The Art Book, Vol. 16, May 2009, p. 66-68
  • Julian Freeman, 'Joash Woodrow: Landscapes By Philip Vann And Jackie Wulschlager', The Art Book, Vol. 16, February 2009, pp. 45-46
  • Jackie Wullschlager, ‘Portrait of a Lost Artist’, Financial Times, 1 December 2007, p. 18
  • Robert Clark, The Guide: Exhibitions: Joash Woodrow', The Guardian, 20 October 2007, p. 37
  • Philip Vann, Joash Woodrow: Landscapes (Leeds Metropolitan University with assistance from 108 Fine Art and the Joash Woodrow Family, 2007)
  • Philip Vann, Jackie Wullschläger and 108 Fine Art Gallery, Joash Woodrow: Landscapes (Leeds Metropolitan University with assistance from 108 Fine Art and the Joash Woodrow Family, 2007)
  • Obituary, Jewish Chronicle, 24 March 2006, p. 26
  • Joash Woodrow: Figurative Paintings (Harrogate: 108 Contemporary Fine Art, 2006)
  • David Glasser, intro., Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2006), p. 13
  • Julia Wiener, 'Out of the Shadows', Jewish Chronicle, 16 September 2005, p. 43
  • Peter Chapman, 'Private View, Joash Woodrow', The Independent, 23 July 2005, p. 14
  • Nicholas Usherwood, Joash Woodrow: Retrospective (Joash Woodrow Collection in Association with 108 Fine Art, 2004)

Related organisations

  • Leeds College of Art (student)
  • Royal College of Art (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Behind The Canvas I – Joash Woodrow, 108 Fine Art (2022)
  • Reflections,108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate (2017)
  • In the Garden, online exhibition, FIne Art Society, London (2016)
  • Joash Woodrow – The 1960s, 108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate (2013)
  • The Allotments, 108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate (2013)
  • Apocalypse: Unveiling a Lost Masterpiece by Marc Chagall, Ben Uri Gallery (2010)
  • Joash Woodrow, 1927-2006, The Fine Art Society, Bond Street (2009)
  • Solo Exhibition, Leeds Metropolitan University (2009)
  • Homeless & Hidden 2: World Class Collection Homeless & Hidden, Ben Uri Gallery (2009)
  • Drawings of the North East Coast, Pannett Art Gallery, Whitby (2007)
  • Retrospective Exhibition – Works on Paper, Liverpool University Art Gallery (2007)
  • Joash Woodrow: Landscapes, Leeds Metropolitan University (2007)
  • Retrospective Exhibition – Works on Paper, Hull University Art Gallery (2006)
  • Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006, Ben Uri Gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art (2006)
  • Liverpool University Gallery (2005)
  • Joash Woodrow Retrospective, Ben Uri Gallery and Royal College of Art (2005)
  • Solo exhibition, Manchester Art Gallery (2005)
  • Images of Leeds: Landscape Paintings and Drawings, Leeds City Art Gallery (2004)
  • Solo Exhibition, 108 Fine Art Gallery, Harrogate (2002)
  Joash Woodrow
   
Ben Uri collection

Joash Woodrow in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Joash Woodrow]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Joash Woodrow] in the Ben Uri Library