Wood engraver, etcher, and illustrator John Frederic Greenwood was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1885. He studied at Shipley and Bradford Schools of Art and the Royal College of Art in London (1908 - 1911). Greenwood taught at Battersea, Bradford, and Leeds Schools of Art, and exhibited internationally. He illustrated "Twenty-Four Woodcuts of Cambridge" and "A Short History of Ely Castle," and his prints were included in several compilations on the subject of the modern woodcut craft.

In 1921 his first woodengraving was exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers, but in 1926 he became involved with Gordon Craig's rival group, the English Wood Engraving Society with a number of other artists including Bliss, Hermes, Hughes-Stanton and Underwood.

Greenwood's style, an expert and precise harmony of light and shadow, is heralded as among the finest to represent the English landscape and its architecture. Malcolm Salaman in Art of the Woodcut: Masterworks from the 1920s wrote, "Mr. John F. Greenwood's reputation as an engraver of the English country, sensitively observed and finely planned on the block, is well established, and his interesting woodcut series of the Cambridge Colleges shows his pictorial sympathies with buildings hallowed by associations."

Greenwood was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. He taught at Bradford School of Art, Battersea Polytechnic and Leeds College of Art.

John Frederick Greenwood died in Ilkley, Yorkshire, England in 1954.