Featured Artwork: Unnamed: Broken Wall in Winter

None. This painting is unnamed and unsigned.

By the Broken Wall, 1941

This painting is unsigned and unnamed, however, it appears that it may actually be unfinished. There could be a number of reasons for this, the first is that Woodward often had as many as 50 or more unfinished paintings at any given time in his storage area. We think perhaps he would get stuck on where to go next with the painting, or maybe he had not found the time to get back to the location to finish it. Yet still, this is obviously painted from the cottage he had built on the Burnt Hill property (a total of 160 acres), dating it between 1940 and 1950.

To the right is the painting, By the Broken Wall, painted in 1941. Its perspective is quite similar but this piece appears closer suggesting he may have painted it outside on the tea terrace along side the cottage. You can only work so long with paint in the cold. Not only does it thicken and the brush stiffens, but it doesn't dry - it freezes so there is no way an artist would have enough time to complete a painting in one sitting. Woodward simply got down what he could, perhaps over more than one day but did not get back to it for whatever reason.

Frost on the Window, 1941-'42

We do not see anything about the painting to suggest Woodward would be unsatisfied with it. There is nothing out of sorts about it and so we are going to presume it either got lost in the pile of other unfinished paintings had had open at any given time or that the 1950 fire that destroyed the cottage prohibited him from completing it. The day Woodward arrive at the pasture to find the cottage burned was the last day he ever. He was so heartbroken, he never returned and maybe he also could not bring himself to finish this painting. (He retired from painting in 1952. His last painting, a Window Picture.)


To the left is the painting, Frost on the Window. If you look at the scene outside the window, you see the "broken wall" and birch tree similar to the vantage point of the painting above. However, you can also see that Woodward's position for this painting and By the Broken Wall seems to be more in proximity to theother side of the storage/garage area seen outside the window to the left of the painting . Reinforcing our belief he painted it outside.