RobertStrongWoodward.com Banner image

Dorothy Day Tufts



Dorothy Day Tufts
Dorothy Day Tufts

                                

Dorothy Day Tufts
a remembrance by her son, Nathan Tufts, Jr.



Dorothy Day Tufts
Dorothy Day Tufts
Please click here for enlargements of the photographs in this essay

When asked for biographical information concerning her friendship with Robert Strong Woodward, I found no easy or single source.

"D.D.T." as she signed her many paintings and portraits, was the daughter of a beautiful and talented woman, Grace Wanning Day, also an artist. She was born in 1898 in Shelton, Connecticut, was an accomplished horsewoman, and in 1919, attended Yale Art School for a short time.

She survived her mother when a trolley rolled down an embankment in Guilford, Connecticut, in 1920 ... all other passengers were killed, including her mother sitting beside her. She sustained a badly dislocated hip, but healed sufficiently to become a good tennis player. In her forties she had a hip replacement, the second to receive this operation after Arthur Godfrey.

Portrait of her son Nate by Dorothy Day Tufts
Portrait of her son, Nathan, by Dorothy Day Tufts
Still life by Dorothy Day Tufts
Still life by Dorothy Day Tufts
During the 20's and 30's she raised her two daughters, Grace and Mary, and her son, Nathan Jr., with her husband, Nathan Tufts, in Greenfield, Mass., where he was employed by the New England Box Co. Their large home at 500 Main Street became an artistic and social center in the town during two pre-war decades.. My recollection as a child was that she would retire to her studio each morning, and paint for 4 or 5 hours. She did many portraits of her children and friends, and a few commissions for Portraits, Incorporated, in New York. She had exhibitions at the Talcott Library, Northfield School; Deerfield Art Association; Moyer Gallery, Hartford; and an unknown gallery in New Britain, Connecticut.

She would go, often with her best friend and artist, Elizabeth Fuller of Deerfield, up to Vermont, set up her easel on some hillside, and paint the village below. On one such solo she felt a "presence" behind her. Turning, there was a full blooded Indian man, home from the Reservation, just watching her work! She told me she thought war could be ended in the world entirely if "all military men were dressed in pajamas!"

Her prolific artistic output slowed in her declining years, but the legacy hangs on, and beautifies the walls of scores of homes of family and friends.



NT
November, 2012


Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts
Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts
Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts
Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts
Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts
Landscape by Dorothy Day Tufts


Hartford Courant Article about Dorothy Day Tufts Exhibition May 29, 1949
Dorothy Day Tufts Exhibition
Hartford Courant, May 29, 1949
It is recorded that Robert Strong Woodward worked in his Hiram Woodward studio on a commission to make a portrait. A notebook revealed that on January 24th,1932, he began "a 25 x 30 portraiture of Mrs. Moore and her great grandson, Johnnie, working from a photograph." He worked on it day after day after day. His notes indicate that he was becoming progressively more discouraged. He was simply incapable of doing this form of art. Finally, on March 2, 1932, he wrote "I just am unable to paint a portrait" and destroyed the image. He then referred the client to another local artist. It is not definitely known who this artist was, but in reflection, I think it could well have been D. D. Tufts. Perhaps someday we will find a D. D. Tufts portrait of Mrs. Moore and her great grandson. This will prove that D. D. Tufts was the artist to whom Woodward referred Mrs. Moore for her portrait.

Dorothy Day Tufts Living Room
The Tufts' Living Room, a chalk drawing by Robert Strong Woodward
The pond at the home of Dorothy Day Tufts was the site where Robert Strong Woodward made the chalk drawing Across The Pond.

In addition, her home in Greenfield was the setting for the Robert Strong Woodward still life The Tufts' Living Room.

Finally, Dorothy Day Tufts created many of the illustrations in the cookbook, The Road to Good Food. This cookbook had a cover illustration by Robert Strong Woodward. Click here to see samples of the Dorothy Day Tufts illustrations in the Road to Good Food.


LMP
November, 2012


Dorothy Tufts Paintings Are Shown Here

Landscapes, Portraits, Still Lifes
Exhibition at Moyer Gallery
An exhibition of oil paintings by Dorothy Day Tufts, of Greenfield, Mass is now on view through June 4 at the Moyer Gallery, 252 Trumbull Street (Hartford, Connecticut).

Mrs. Tufts is showing landscapes, portraits and floral still lifes. Her work is most interesting in its more "modern" side. here, as noted in the exhibition catalog, she has taken "an abstract approach to fundamental naturalism. "Redonesque designs, with a nice quality of drawing about them, and an attractive texture gained from dry, patchy handling of paint, give style, verve and good formalism to such pictures as "Flowers And Fruit" or "Red Poppy." The same, calligraphic patterns and vibrant pigment also give quality, a lively vision and flair to such landscapes as "Vroughton's Pond," "Spring Storm" and "Fall Hillside," though in the latter two, Mrs. Tufts is indulging herself in a little too lush coloring to serve any sound purpose.

"Cornfield," which is being given "top billing" in the exhibition with a reproduction on the catalogue cover and a place of honor in the gallery window, is one of Mrs. Tuft's most ambitious undertakings, in area at least. However, I found it basically more conventional than her best work, and preferred "Factory Hollow Ruin," a kind of tower effect, more interesting in its melancholic mood, its solid and compact composition and linear style.

I was less taken with "Still Life With Apple," "Colrain River" and "Dorset, Vermont" which seems a little flat, literally and figuratively, in comparision with the brusquer quasi-abstractions. Mrs. Tufts' portraits, too, struck me as a bit art-schoolish and academic, though they may be good enough likenesses. Among them, however, one, "Maria Luisa," seems to show the same fresh lively merits of the best of the artist's still lifes and landscapes.

T. H. P.
The Hartford Courant, May 29, 1949, page 11