"Painted in 1939. Painted in studio from an earlier canvas (1932) of the same subject which was never satisfactory and which I destroyed. The old Abercrombie House of Old Deerfield."
"One of the old stark gray houses in Old Deerfield, sunlit front, red chimneys, blue and white sky, rose, ochre, tan foreground with no or little green. Beautifully painted green, gray, sunlit embankment stone wall."
"The first image of this old house made by Woodward was a waxed crayon drawing which he titled The Old Gray House, Deerfield. Many years later Woodward, in the Southwick Studio, retrieved this from the store room and made the above oil painting from it. The finishing touches, however were done in plain air sitting in the rear of the Packard Phaeton on site in Old Deerfield."
It was not until we did a deep dive into the exhibition list that we learned this chalk drawing existed. This
appeared to be an important subject to Woodward. Not only did he make a wax crayon of the scene in the
early-to-mid 1930's. According to
Dr. Mark's first hand account says Woodward retrieved it from his storage space, started the painting
in his Southwick Studio, and did the finishing touches in plain air at the scene.
It is not unreasonable to think
this chalk is the same scene but there is the slight chance it is not. Let's also note where the oil and chalk
paintings exhibited and for how long... These are not ordinary, run of the mill, galleries and this neither is
this scene to Woodward. [ See From Old Deerfield
for more. ]
The crayon, The Old Gray House, Deerfield's
whereabouts is unknown. We only have a couple surviving crayons. The Aste House to the left
is one. The other is The Mary Lyon Church.
Both are distinctly historic Upper St. properties which is why we suggest the crayon may have been closer
to the mid-1930's when Woodward moved to Upper Street (Mar. 1935). Prior to that date, it is rare to find
any Upper Street paintings. Perhaps Woodward began experimenting with wax crayon before he moved to
Southwick and continued briefly afterwards.
Just a quick note: some newspapers often referred
to pastels (Woodward called chalks) as crayons confusing the matter even more but here Dr. Mark is very
specific to point out it was wax, not pastel.