RSW's Diary Comments

Old New England, Chalk, c. 1931

There is no diary entry for this painting...

⮞ To the right is an image of the chalk drawing (pastel) by the same name. From the description we have of this painting, we are certain they are not the same subject.

An Old Farm, c. 1921

⮜ To the left is a picture of an earlier painting of the same subject but from a slight farther distance. Its name indicates a relationship to the name "Old New England" and we believe after a caption under an image the painting of this page was incorrectly named, "Landscape."

Boston Globe, Dec. 23, 1926, by A.J. Philpott

The Boston Globe's A.J. Philpott's description:

"'Old New England' is a gem in its bit of hill distance and a cluster of buildings in the foreground..."

Editor's Note:

⮜ After doing some homework, we verified all the information we had on the 1926 One-man Show at the Lyman home in Boston. We have stumbled on an error that originated from a newspaper clipping about the exhibition. In that article, there is an image of a painting captioned "Landscape." However, no painting by that name is listed on the exhibition card given to event visitors.


In our review and reading the description given by A.J. Philpott, a dependable critic who would be an admirer of the artist, we felt strongly his description matched the painting captioned "Landscape" from the Boston Evening Transcript a couple of weeks earlier. There is more; we also have an early 1920s painting of the same subject named "An Old Farm," and we are now thinking that the oil canvas "Old New England" is, in all likelihood, this subject incorrectly captioned in the Evening Transcript paper.

A December 1926 unknown source clipping

⮞ The image to the right is the one used for the image above because it is the best picture we have of this subject. However, it is incorrectly cited as being the Boston Evening Transcript. We dug through every scrapbook we have and we could not find this clipping anywhere. We have to assume Dr. Mark is the one who found it and took its label at face value. Yet, looking at it further, it does not match the Boston Evening Transcript clipping. The Transcript used a different, fancier, border around the picture and none of the version we have are torn in the lower right-hand corner. Below is the Boston Evening Transcript clipping ⮟

Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 8, 1926

⮝ As you can see, there is not even enough room above the image to handwrite any sort of label without seeing the border above. Also, it is very subtle but note the breaks on each corner of the border surrounding the image to form squares... That does not appear in the image above.

⮜ The clipping image to the left is clearly captioned "Landscape" which we now believe is incorrect. We will keep working to confirm this. Hopefully we will find the clipping above with the nice picture and it will have the image captioned correctly or have an article accompanying the image that will help us further.