RSW's Diary Comments

The First Congregational Church
Manchester Village, Vermont

Woodward did not keep records of his pastel paintings he called chalk drawings. With that being said, we are still not sure how the information on this pastel's existence did not make the 1970, Deerfield Academy's American Studies Group catalog of Woodward's work. More on this in the "Additional Notes" section below.

Editor's Note:

It would be a mistake to assume this painting is about the church itself. Woodward avoided making commentary in anything of a religious nature. His church paintings are about the town or village center as the glue that holds the community together, and while religion is another additive, if there were no religions, a place where people gathered would still exist. It is the literal meaning of the word church. The artist liked to be literal, in a romantic way, by stripping things down to their bare essentials without sentimentality. The artist got associated with churches when he painted Enduring New England in 1931, the year before the historic Marlboro, Vermont, church would be lost to fire. However, in this instance, as it was for most of his SVAA paintings, directed at an intended market-- the summering New Yorkers in Manchester. traditionally, the SVAA event would be held the week leading up to Labor Day, the unofficial end of the summer season.

A capture of the Manchester Spire from Mount Equinox in Shadow, another SVAA painting. Woodward also painted a couple of canvases of Manchester's Equinox golf course for the golf obsessed vacationers. We believe that from this angle we are seeing the back of the church's extended buildings blocking the church itself from view.

1948 SVAA Exhibit Program, pg. 5
citing The Manchester Spire's appearance.

An Essay on the 19 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.