Some people believe that Wood will in time to come take his place among the great names in art as a master of colour. Meanwhile speculaters sometimes pay as much as £2,000 for a picture from his brush.
He was the son of Liverpool doc-for and was sent to London at the age of 19 to earn his living in the office of a dried fruit importer.
One day Augustus John saw him sketching in the Cafe Royal and persuaded him to take up painting seriously.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.