After studying at Goldsmith's College, London, and spending the First World War years in the Royal Engineers, his career began to flourish in the 1920's, when he achieved considerable notoriety for his still lifes of porcelain figures arranged in classically inspired tableaux. At his time he was hailed by some critics as "undeniably brilliant" (the Sunday Times), while the Daily Mirror saw the succes of his 1925 exhibition at Spinks in London as a "triumph" and "... a direct challenge to the ultra-modernists, since Mr. Greenwood is in the best tradition of painting." At this exhibition, Greenwood sold twenty-eight out of thirty works on view, for the then considerable sum of 2,500 Pounds Stirling -- half of them selling within the first half-hour of the show opening. Greenwood stated that the idea for these workds derived from his being too poor to afford models. At this time, he executed numerous self-portraits for the same reason. Later in his career he went on to paint a variety of still-lifes, landscapes and architectural studies.
The subject from his still-lifes is taken from Boccacio's famous 14th Century story

See illustration