RSW's Diary Comments

The Green Bottle and the Barn, c. 1945

There is no diary entry for this painting. It was only discovered after an audit of the Southern Vermont Artist Association Exhibit programs. We know it is an oil from the program. (RSW only noted what the painting was if it was a chalk- he would write in the right margin "chalk" and for an oil he made just a check mark.) See below...

Editor's Note:

There is perhaps no more recognizable bottle in all of Woodward's Window Picture paintings- the large Green Bottle seen in the painting to the right. Yet, what most people are not aware of is that there is another green bottle that actually appears in more paintings than any other single object in the Artist's collection of brick-a-brack. It is the tiny bottle highlighted in the image below, and it is just like the artist's use of something so small and seemingly innocuous but indeed overlooked. He is sneaky that way...

Bottle Parade, 1941

Can you spot it without enlarging the image? If not, enlarge the image and we have added an arrow pointed to the unassuming tiny green bottle. We selected this painting because it is more hidden than usual but even if we made it obvious, it would be hard to spot because your eye is drawn to the more vibrant colors such as the aqua blue larger bottle next to it.

The "tiny green bottle" appears in at least 12 Window Picture paintings made in the artist's Southwick studio. Another thing many are unaware of is that prior to Southwick, the artist only made a handful of Window Picture paintings in his Hiram studio between 1924 and 1928. He did not pick it up as a regular study until 1937 from Southwick making more than 50 up to his retirement in 1952. That is four a year...

Southern Vermont Artists, Inc.,
1946 Exhibition Program, pg2

An Essay on the 20 New Discovered Paintings:

The first catalog of Woodward's work was compiled by the Deerfield Academy's American Studies Group during the 1969 to 1970 school year. Dr Mark and Woodward's friend, F. Earl Williams, a Deerfield alum, all contributed to the effort that culminated in an exhibition of his work at the Hilson Gallery on the Deerfield campus.


The resources available to the Deerfield students were mostly word of mouth, a network of people in the area who knew this or that about the whereabouts of paintings, etc. They diligently sought the first-hand testimony of people who knew Woodward well, including Dr. Mark, Williams, Woodward's cousin Florence Haeberle, among others. The group also wrote letters to all of the area galleries, colleges, and museums to gather information on Woodward's work in their collections, or once exhibited in their halls. Their efforts were comprehensive and far-reaching, and while not all recipients responded, most complied. This dedication has allowed us to continue adding to the catalog consistently over the past twenty-two years of the website's existence.

One of the main reasons is that Woodward did not keep records of his pastel paintings, which he called chalk drawings. He could make them quickly, quicker than his oil paintings, and they are also smaller than his most popular oil painting size (25" x 30"). For these reasons, he sold them for a quarter of the price of his smallest oils and frequently gave them out as gifts, especially to those who let him on their property to paint their barns, homes or pastures. We do not know how many there are and could not possibly hazard a guess as to how many pastels there are.

Summer in Manchester, 1937, was also not list-
ed in the original catalog, but is in the SVAA program.

The recent discovery of 15 previously unknown paintings, eight pastels and seven oils, is a surprising revelation. These paintings were found in the physical exhibition programs still in the collection of the artist's estate. The context of this discovery is important. By 1969, the Southern Vermont Artist Association (SVAA) no longer existed. The SVAA left its legacy to the museum it built in Manchester, VT, and the Southern Vermont Art Center has all the records for the SVAA's many exhibits. The students of Deerfield wrote to the art center for their records on Woodward's paintings. The mystery lies in the records they used to supply the studies group.

The art center may have used business records, or perhaps the organization had, over time, compiled a library-like card catalog put together by volunteers. However, whatever source they used, their records were incomplete. This is evident from the exhibit programs. Our advantage is that Woodward always seemed to make it a point to mark his paintings exhibited in the programs, making them easier for us to find. This may be the reason a number of the programs have paintings already in the artist's catalog and those not in the same years. The challenges in cataloging Woodward's work are significant and ongoing.

Under the November Sky, 1952, another pastel
recently discovered to be missing from the Deerfield
catalog, yet is listed in the 1952 exhibit program. It is
our good fortune the owner reached out to us prompt-
ing our investigation into this issue and its result.

So why did the Deerfield students not get this material from Dr. Mark? This is the second reason: he did not know he had it. Dr. Mark had only moved into the Southwick home of the artist 11 years before the Deerfield project. He started a country medical practice by converting the carriage house into an office, taking many of the things stored there, and placing them in the studio or one of the home's many attics. He also started a family and was raising two kids with his wife Barbara, both caretakers of 14 acres of land.

It was not until much later, probably the 1980s, when his kids were off to college and his practice well-established, that he began to go through the boxes and, in some cases, the desk draws in the studio to sort and organize Woodward's things. Twenty years later, after he retires, does he start the website, a monumental task for someone in his mid-seventies. He never thought to verify the American Studies Group's SVAA records against the programs, which only cover from 1935 to 1951, due to the 1934 fire, meaning there could be more paintings from the seven years of missing programs.