Featured Artwork: Evening Stream #2

RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted in 1923. This painting, (size uncertain) like the above I made soon after Redgate burned and sold to Mrs. Charles E. Ulrick, 1808 Columbia Terrace, Peoria, Illinois. Now probably in possession of her daughter Lena Ulrick Belsley (Mrs. Ray Belsley) of Peoria, Il.

Evening Stream #1

Boston Globe, May 1929, by A. J. Philpott

"There is sentiment--meditation---in Evening Stream."

It is the review above by the Boston Globe's A.J. Philpott that confirms this painting exhibited at the 1929 Myles Standish Gallery. The question is, if Woodward painted it in 1923 why did he wait six years to show it? The same could be asked of the other painting by the same name (to the left) which Woodward seemed to have made before this painting but its earliest confirmed exhibit is the Deerfield Inn in 1935?

There is so much confusion surrounding these two paintings - which painting exhibited at the 1926 Lyman Show? Or the 1928 J.H. Miller show? We are finding it impossible to separate the two paintings to any satisfactory conclusion.

Silent River, 1921

We believe the other Evening Steam was made before this painting because of its similarity to the 1921 painting Silent River. You might ask, 'how did Evening Stream #1 survive the Redgate fire?' and that would be a good question. It is most likely that held a special meaning to Woodward and it most likely hung in his personal residence which at the time would be the main house of the Hiram Woodward Place he was renting before he bought it.

Woodward admits in his diary comments he made #2 after the Redgate fire in 1923 confirming to us he did return there to paint. If we were to hazard a guess to what painting exhibited were, we would say the Evening Stream #1 hung at the Lyman exhibit in 1926, and #2 hung at J.H. Miller in '28 and Myles Standish in '29 but that is it. All of the other exhibited paintings after 1929 were in all likelihood Evening Stream #1.