RSW's Diary Comments

✽ Woodward did not keep records of his pastel paintings he called chalk drawings.

The New York Herald Tribune, Aug. 28, 1938
by Royal Cortissoz

Editor's Note:

There are four known paintings that refer to "silver" clouds or sky. Two feature Mt. Equinox, one of Mt. Haystack and the fourth is of the Beech Tree in Heath. Moreover, three of these paintings exhibited at the Southern Vermont Artist Association's annual, end of summer holiday, Labor Day Weekend exhibition. The exhibition was a very profitable endeavor to many of the artist that participated and Woodward was no exception. In fact, he specifically traveled to Vermont to make many of the "Vermont-themed" scenes catering to the summering New York City elites who would buy the works as mementos of their, often annual, retreat. The show was popular enough the New York's "Dean of Art Critics," Royal Cortissoz would leave the city to write a review for the New York Herald Tribune.

There is another pastel painting by very similar name, Silver Sky Over Equinox that went to auction in 2006. The image is very poor but we imagine the subject and scene are fairly close and we believe the two were probably made years apart. Perhaps the artist forgot he made Silver Sky Over Equinox because he did it more than a decade earlier. See that artwork page for more...

1948 SVAA Exhibit Program, pg. 5
The painting name for this pastel above is
not corrected by the artist in the program,
confirming it is correct. Whereas there is no
program confirming similarly named other.

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.