The 2025 Calendars have been picked up from the printers and have been delivered to local vendors, and are ready for sale. It will not be too much longer for the tools that allow you to order them online operational. Keep checking back with us or the Buckland Historical Society website.
You can find the calendars locally at the following stores:
The Buckland Public Library
30 Upper Street
Buckland, MA
Boswell's Books
10 Bridge Street
Shelburne Falls, MA
Nancy L. Dole Books
& Ephemera
20 State Street
Shelburne Falls, MA
Andy's & The Oak Shoppe
352 Deerfield Street
Greenfield, MA
The theme for this year's annual Woodward calendar to benefit the Buckland Historical
Society is 'the Hills of Buck-land.' We cannot say he painted every hill in the small town, but 10 of the 12 named hills
within its borders appear in this, the 18th issue of the calendar series.
The demand for this year's calendar
has been very high and so we encourage you to not wait too long before you get yours.
The Southern Vermont Artist Association, Inc. (SVAA) was one of Woodward's most profitable. It also shows his business acumen and how he targeted his product to the market. When we found ourselves auditing the sixteen programs in our collection, what stood out the most was just how many of the paintings did not exhibit anywhere else that we have a record of suggesting they most likely sold at the exhibit. Not only that, from the names of the 15 new discover-ies we made, most were distinctly Vermont mountain subjects specifically targeting the summering New Yorkers who frequented the area and visited the event. Here is how important the SVAA was; the dean of NYC art critics, Royal Cortissoz, frequently reviewed the show! See our updates below for more...
Malcolm Vaughn, New York American, February 9, 1935
Welcome to RobertStrongWoodward.com! The website is divided into two main features. First is the
Gallery of Woodward's artwork sorted in themes and then alphabetically. There is also the Scrapbook which contains
collections of stories, memorabilia and specific citations related to Woodward, his life and achievements. It is at once a tribute and historical record of Woodward
and the life and times from which he drew his inspiration.
Not only known for his landscape paintings, Woodward had a pas-sion for the restoration and preservation of aging buildings. In his life as a professional artist, he took an unused old diary shed and converted it to his first studio, Redgate. He then purchased an abandoned farm, the old Hiram Woodward Place, and restored it to a show piece of old New England. He then purchased an old mill (Boehmer's Mill) nearby and returned it to its former glory. After a tragic fire burned Hiram in 1934, he purchased another abandon farm, the Southwick Place featuring its early 19th century blacksmith shop into a model of New England tradition that appears today as it did when he lived there... His studios are a reflection of his values.
The galleries consist of nearly 800 known works of art created by Woodward. We have some form of an image for approximately 75% of them! The galleries are organized in two ways.
The first is the Theme Gallery, sorted into 25 categories. The second is alphabetical, making up 8 separate galleries plus a gallery of artwork RSW didn't name or we do not have a name
for at this time. Plus, visit our Complete Works List and surf the website from there!
In addition to the artwork, when available, we provide additional notes and background related to the artwork, as well as, links to related paintings or locations for a richer
experience and connection to the area.
The Recollections Scrapbook is a collect-ion of personal ac-counts from people who either knew Wood-ward personally or related to us an experi-ence they have had related to Woodward. A number of the stories told come from this website's originator, Mark Purinton (seen in picture to the left with Woodward), who started working for Woodward as a boy
.This is our "story behind the paintings" collection. It includes some of Wood-ward's favorite subjects, such as, his neighbor Harrison Keach's Farm, the Halifax (VT) House and the North Window of his Southwick studio. There is also Charlemont Bridge artwork before the bridge was destroyed in the hurricane of 1938 and Marlboro Church, part of a "church series" Woodward was commissioned for by industrialist Francis P. Garvin before his death.
Recent Website Updates |
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OUR CURRENT PROJECT MISSION:
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UPDATE: November 01, 2024
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October 2024
NEW PIC Proud Elm You are going to have to scroll to see this new picture of this much loved painting. Its extreme aspect
ratio makes it one of the most rectangular paintings in the artist's oeuvre but it is also an upright
painting meaning it is tall- very tall. Woodward obviously liked Elm trees. He painted them several times
including it in the painting names, Wide Spreading Elm, Dooryard Elm, The Hitchcock
Elm and this piece, which was painted in historic old Deerfield area, as was the Hitchcock Elm. |
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Oct. 2024
NEW PASTEL Under the November Sky This newly discovered pastel painting was the catalyst to our audit of all of the exhibit programs we have on record. First was the surprise that Mrs. Frelinghuysen bought a Beech Tree painting when, with just a few exceptions, she mostly purchased Vermont specific subjects. So we went looking in the programs to see if this one was missed, we found 20 missing names! Moreover, this pastel was not found in any of the SVAA programs, however, we do have one missing year out of 17 and that is 1936. |
Oct. 2024
NEW PASTEL From the Pasture Top in June Similar to Under the November Sky, this pastel was purchased by Mrs. Frelinghuysen, by far Woodward's best customer. Second place is a distant, distant second by as much as 4 times. Most of her purchases were pastels we believe, because she held the medium in high esteem. Her mother, Louisine Havemeyer, who was close friends with renown American artist, Mary Cassatt, who along with her boyfriend Edgar Dugas, did great things with pastel and were well known for them. |
October 2024
NEW IMAGE Silver Clouds and Haystack We have had a picture of this pastel painting for a couple of years now but the glare from the glass over the painting was so distracting we deemed it unusable. However, re-cently we have develop-ed a technique to reduce the glare in pictures of paintings. It is tedious and takes numerous cyc-les of processing but we find that in the end it is worth it... You can still make out some of the features of the room it hangs, but now you can also see the painting itself without straining to ignore the glare. |
October 2024
NEW PAGES Below are 5 of 20 newly discovered painting names found in an audit of Woodward's personal collection of Southern Vermont Artists Associ-ation exhibit programs not originally included in the Deerfield Academy's 1970 catalog of Wood-ward's work. 3- Oils - Long Years Have Passed- Grace of Age - Bottles and Snow 2- Pastels - Mount Equinox fromSunderland - Mount Stratton from Peru |
Oct. 2024
JOURNEYING Maple Sugaring & Steaming Sugar House We will call this "Brian and Larch's Excellent Adventure!" One day in the Buckland area with time to
kill, the two set out to locate and see if they could find the rem-nant of the old Keach sugar house that appear-ed to hang
precariously on a steep slope on Koo-chuag (Snow) Mountain. |
October 2024
CORRECTED The Sugar House For years, it was assumed that this was an interior painting much like In The Sugar House, however, it is no longer believed to be so. We now believe this painting is the EXTERIOR of the Gray Sugar House RSW was making when it got too cold and windy to paint outside and he was carried inside to warm up. That, of course, led to him making the pastel that would become the oil mentioned above. |
October 2024
UPDATED In The Sugar House Brian and Larch are getting pretty good at being able to get the most out of an old photograph and this is a good example. When Brian learned the pic we have is from an old photo taken in the early 1980s, he realized the problem with the picture was that it was over saturated with yellow from the room's lighting. He adjusted the saturation reducing the yellow to get a better representation and showed it to Larch. Larch took it further (to show Brian up, he believes) and worked on it some more to bring out the true reds, blues and purples. While it is still a 1980s picture and the best we have. It now looks much more like the original chalk drawing. |
Sept. 2024
NEW PAGE The Church at Bennington, Vermont This page has been so long over due. We have known for some time now that the Bennington Church oil painting had a sibling chalk drawing but no page was ever made for it. We offer a theory as to why the chalk was made but fail to point out that the pastels often give RSW an accurate rendering of the colors he will replicate in oil. It is a useful tool. |
Sept. 2024
NEW FINDS Beside the Road in Dover The first of three new pastel painting discoveries. From its name we have a good idea what painting it is related to and where it exhibited - the Southern Vermont Artist Association (SVAA). Near the SeventhThis discovery surprised us a bit. It was seen in the 1942 exhibit program for the SVAA, and while we know there is a painting that once hung in the Equinox Golf Club's dinning room of the ninth hole. We did not, however, know about this chalk drawing. Under the November SkyThis chalk drawing is said to be of the Beech Tree in Heath. We are hoping for some pictures soon. We can't wait to see this piece painted in his favorite month. |
Sept. 2024
NEW INFO October (1944) In Woodward's diary comments, he claims this painting never left the studio until it was sold. However, this is contrary
to the facts and it seems inexplicable as to why this would be. This painting hung, alone on its own wall,in a place of honor
in a special exhibit in Springfield in Novem-ber 1944 that also featur-ed four other of the country's best painters. The
issue may stem from the article we discover-ed... they botched Woodward's name! His middle name no less. |
Sept. 2024
NEW INFO Snowing on the Hill Add this painting to award winners! Again from an article we trans-cribed this week, we learn that this painting,
which once hung in the London Embassy, is also an Award Winner. It won an Honorable Mention award at the 1941 annual
Jordan Marsh Co. event. Again, not mentioned in his painting diary entry and inexplicably, the program for that year
is missing from our collec-tion. We have added it to the Awards Gallery and
updated the page to add the honor. |
Sept. 2024
UPDATED Marlboro Meeting House Library, Bookplate This page was updated because it was next in line in our audit project. Coinciding with the audit we had located an invit-ation to the re-dedication of East Poultney Church. Woodward was a popular guy with Vermont church-es in 1937. He has been commissioned by Francis P. Garvan to painting historic, architecturally and historical, churches. This was prompted by RSW's painting, Enduring New England, that has the original Marlboro Me-eting House building. It burned down the next year and its architect for the new meeting house used RSW's painting to help in his design and this bookplate honors his contribution. |
Sept. 2024
NEW PIC Unnamed: Good Neighbors We cannot even begin to explain how this new image of an unnamed painting got lost in the mix of things,
but we have had it for at least a year. A new page was made for it and it simply fell through the cracks. |
Sept. 2024
UPDATED Majestic New Hampshire Magic This page got updated as part of our ongoing audit and update of the website. Not all updates make this list. This canvas did for a couple of reasons, the first being, it is such a unique brush-style for the artist to use. It is actually very similar to the celebrated painting also in this monthly update, Snowing on the Hill, and minimalist for the artist known for his detail. It is very refreshing. We ALSO managed to pinpoint the location from where RSW positioned himself to make it. |
07-27-2024
REVELATIONS Keach's Stove & Mrs. Keach's Front Porch Talk about two paintings having very different fortunes. Woodward con-sidered both among his masterpieces, yet one ended up
never being sold and remaining in his personal collection. The other is one of his most traveled, recognized, and one of the
most frequent-ly mentioned in news-papers at the shows it appears. It ends up in the collection of a famous person and
eventually a museum. But the two paintings are #1 and #2 of the most exhibited Keach Farm-themed paintings, as well as, focused
on the family home and NOT the farm. |
07-26-2024
INSIDE THE BARN UPDATES In the Old Barn, 1921 The first of six, maybe seven painting's of the Keach barn interior. It is a pastel painting the artist called chalk drawings. Old Rafters, 1925 The second Keach barn interior painting is the largest and went into the private collection of a famous person in Boston. It is also the painting by which the next, smaller version, was made. New Hay, 1926,'27 A smaller version of Old Rafters, this painting never exhibited and was kept by the artist in his personal collection. The reasons are unknown to us. |
07-23-2024
BIG DISCOVERY Dusty Rafters, 1929 We believe this was made specifically for the Littlecote exhibit which was his first in Eastern New York and the new Myles Standish
Hotel art gallery in Boston that followed. Another first, the Standish event would be the first of many shows at the hotel. |
07-22-2024
MORE INSIDE THE BARN In Keach's Barn, 1931 This pastel painting appears to have been made specifically for the show it appears, the 1931 Tryon Gallery Exhibit at Smith College. Much like the 1929 Pychon event where the artist featured chalk drawings with their oil counterparts. This piece hung with Dusty Rafters at Smith. Inside the Barn, 1942Nine years later this painting appears seem-ingly out of nowhere to hang at the Grand Cen-tral Art Gallery in New York City and Woodward makes no record of it in his diary. Inside the Old Barn, ? This name/painting is as of now still unconfirmed. |
07-22-2024
PICS ADDED June Brook Part of our brief J Gallery audit, it was the only artwork page in need of updating as the other four had been done prior to getting to the gallery. Nonetheless, we offer you a treat by adding pictures to the page showing what we believe to be the "falls" he painted in this interior woods painting. 07-19-2024 UPDATED Into the Winter Woods Not only did we have this page listed in the wrong order, alphabetically, on the gallery page (we corrected it) but we believe there is enough evidence to conclude that this painting is not the same as the previously unnamed but now given a name by its owner Into the Woods. |
07-17-2024
UPDATED Keach's Barn in Spring There are two seasons for "haying time" and neither are in the Spring, yet the Spring was a pop-ular season for Wood-ward to paint at the Keach farm, all of which are exteriors. While we do not have a picture of this painting we offer you several options and even make one inconclusive suggestion of a strong possibility with what we feel is MORE than a coincidence. |
07-15-2024
UPDATED The Last of Winter & New England in November These two paintings were included in our accounting of the Keach farm paintings. It turns out that both
paintings were also popular with the reviewers. Last of Winter was called "arresting" by critic Royal
Cortizzos, and critic Henry McBride admired all of the "enticing facts" of New England in November, so
much so, he chose not to be hyper-critical of it being too much. |
07-14-2024
UPDATED PICS Country Piazza While examining the most exhibited paintings, this piece which is in the same collection as Keach's Stove,
did not exhibit as much as Keach's Stove but it is where it hung that says all you need to know about
how important it is, needed a refresher on it picture that had a distracting glare. |
07-12-2024
UPDATED PICS The Desk Corner another painting in the same collection as Country Piazza and Keach's Stove with a terrible glare was corrected using our new editing methods. As of this moment, however, the image of Keach's Stove is the best it is going to get for now. We are working on getting a better image. |
07-11-2024
UPDATED PICS At Sugaring Time Back in January all of the attention was on the recently restored When Drifts Melt Fast. This painting is its sibling but facing down the steep hill on the road. It was also plagued with a terrible glare and we were able to reduce it without altering the color and look of the painting's true tones. We also updated the page. |
06-05-2024
NEW GALLERY! "Late Summer" This new gallery's idea was inspired, in part, by our "In November" gal-lery. The concept behind it is that Woodward was
particularly interested in the moments just after the peak and before the impending change. We were not sure what would
come of it. It really turned out more surprising than we could have imagined- 90 paintings making it one of the largest
theme galleries on the website. |
06-01-2024
NEW PICS At Peace This is embarrassing, but we have had a terrible picture of this painting on the website unnecessarily for so many years. That has been corrected. The Peace of Years Mining for a better image of this painting was the product of the "Late Sum-mer" gallery and our new found ways to locate Dr. Mark's original pictures, along with better methods of image editing. We wish we had a color image. It was a fav of the artist. Dooryard Elm This is still a poor image because the original is poor, however, we got hold of its original scan and worked on it a bit. Hopefully, it helps give you a better sense of this "Late Summer" scene. |
05-28-2024
NEW PICS Out of The Past Again, another "Late Summer" scene, the first in a series of 3, maybe 4, similar paintings. It is still a blurry sepia, but that is because the negative we have is blurry. However, there was once a crisp negative of this painting because it was used twice in print and we included those images for you. The Proud Elm More of the same here... we got our hands on a better image of this sepia and made it better with our new techniques. The Three Chimneys This pastel version of The Proud Elm also got an upgrade in quality with a more accurate color balance in a better high resolution. |
05-22-2024
NEW PIC/ UPDATE Sugaring The image of this painting, unfortunately is a copy of a copy. It was taken from an old faded photograph and up to now there was no way to get a higher resolution out of it. While the image is still poor you will clearly make out the sugar-shack seemingly located in the sugarbush. We had to do some homework as to the difference between a sugar grove and a sugar bush In The Sugar Bush It was our audit of this page that led us to the previous artwork above. Its name gave us a different picture in our heads than the articles describing it. This page was updated to included the definition of a sugar bush and some links. |
05-15-2024
UPDATED Inside the Old Barn This page was updated by our audit. It appears to be one of as many as six paintings inside the Keach barn; this painting being one of the earliest. In The Spring This painting was also part of our audit and while we did not need to make many changes, we included it here to draw your attention to what RSW said was, "One of my most perfect windows," along with an early color picture taken by his friend of the painting next to the arranged window! The Old Yellow House; Dover This page was very outdated. We updated it to include RSW's best customer, Adaline Frelinghuysen. |
04-30-2024
ANOTHER ONE! Mountain Meadow Mislabeled as a chalk from the very beginning of the website. This paint-ing has been proven not only to be an oil but it is the painting we identified as New England in October just last month. It would make it the fourth painting in a series we thought stopped at three. New England in October Lesson learned... there was one discrepancy when we linked a color picture to this painting name. Its current owner had done their won homework and traced the provenance back to its original buyer which dif-fered from the one RSW gives. Since we know of no example of RSW ever making such a mistake- we doubted the owner to our own embarrassment. |
04-29-2024
CHANGES MADE The Road Home This painting and the one listed below have similar issue to that of Mountain Meadow and its sibling. It was also mislabeled a chalk drawing since the start of the website. Only for these two paintings, it is also likely that they are the same painting because we do not have the information we have for the other group. It complicates the matter that the difference is two transposed words. The Home Road Page undated to reflect the info above. |
04-27-2024
NEW PIC Unnamed: Along a Hill Road We found this new image in website founder Dr. Mark's copious volume of file folders. The image is a higher
resolution than the previous but you will see that the problem with quality was not just the low-res image.
This painting might be one of the artist earliest "hill road" pieces. Also found with the old sepia are two
photos of the luxurious room it once hung. It is a great treat, enjoy! |
04-24-2024
NEW PICS Dooryard Elm As we always promise, we do all we can to get the best possible pictures of Woodward's work. It is not always possible. We publish what we have primarily to locate the paintings. Countless painting owners have reached out to supply new pics. While still not perfect, this pic is better than the previous. The Little Guest House Court Another find from the depth of Dr. Mark's records and it is much better than the previous. |
04-21-2024
NEW PIC Unnamed: The Keach Farmyard, 1928 We are not even a third of the way through web-site founder, Dr. Mark's file folders and we have caught so many trea-sures. This pic we grab-bed from a torn photo-graph of someone's home. We believe it was taken by RSW friend, F. Earl Williams. It is not the best image, BUT, one can clearly see that it is of what RSW called "the farmyard" along side of the "little red barn" from a perspective unlike any other painting of the same subject. |
04-17-2024
NEW PICS Town Farm in May As much as we love redundancy, we have been trying to eliminate having double artwork pages for the same paint-ing. Usually, this results from the painting's name being changed later either by Woodward, for whatever reason or be-cause the owner has a name they like. None-theless, for this artwork we will two pages for the piece, for now... New England Memories ... the new picture while better is still not great. However, this one has much better color bal-ance than the previous one. |
04-15-2024
NEW PIC In the Sugar House This image is the same as the previous one, only with a much higher resol-ution. The biggest ob-stacle with the new web-site (2009) is that all of the original scans of let-ters A through I, were cor-rupted in their original PowerPoint slides made by Dr. Mark (2002). We have been trying to re-cover them somehow for years. But there may be a light at the end of this tunnel. We are finding some of the lost prints in Dr. Mark's file folders and we just located a cashe of old CDs!!! Cross your fingers. |
04-12-2024
NEW PICS Unnamed: Great Resilience Not only did we find a new better picture in Dr. Mark's files of this painting we have known of since the website's beginnings. We found a way to edit it so that we can now tell you what it is, if not what its name is. |
04-08-2024
UPDATED PAGE In The Afternoon Sun A new high resolution sepia print image along with new thoughts as to why this is only one of no more
than a handful of chalk drawings sepias. In The Hills This page was updated as part of the website audit we are performing. |
04-07-2024
NEW PIC In the August Sun Coincidentally enough, just a day or two after we did an audit of this page did someone email us a photograph of this painting signed and given as a gift by the artist! We have added the picture and provided some information as to the connection of the gift's recipient and the artist. |
03-24-2024
UPDATED In October Hills The next painting on the list for our audit turned out to be much more than we expected. This is the first of 3 very similar com-posite paintings made by Woodward between the winter of 1942 and some-time in late 1944. All three paintings are differ-ent sizes. Each one has tiny variations and differ-ences in the scenes that prompted us to update a total of 5 web pages which led to the discovery of two new images as well as the swapping of names of two images we incorrectly labelled years ago. |
03-31-2024
UPDATED Through October Hills The second painting of this series of similar scenes put together by Woodward using two other paintings was intended for
the same customer as the first and it was still not sold. Woodward drastically changed the perspective. He altered both the
tree grouping to the left and stonewall on the right for a more dramatic effect. |
04-06-2024
UPDATED Wind'll Blow Hill Researching the issue above we found a new and better sepia image swapping it out with the old one. Just After Haying Time Minor updates were made and added.
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03-27-2024
NEW PAGE In Old Boston, oil, 27"x 30" There has always been confusion surrounding this painting that border-ed on an existential crisis- it is or is it not a painting? Well, we have confirmed that it is. Not only that, we sort out the whole mess that is Woodward's Bos-ton paintings to learn that there are 6 Old Boston paintings, of 2 different scenes all exhibiting between 1931 and '35. Old Boston, oil, 40"x 50" This painting is one of 3 of the same scene seen in the chalk drawing by the same name, In Old Boston. This was estab-lished after discovering this piece hung with the pastel at the Mt. Holyoke College event in 1931. |
04-03-2024
UPDATED In Old Boston, Chalk Three paintings, 2 oils and this chalk, all with basically the same name, does not make it easy on us to figure out what is what in regard to the Boston paintings but thank goodness RSW kept this pastel for himself. Otherwise we would have no idea what there is a second scene the artist also painted in oil as well. In Old Boston, oil, 36"x 42" This page was updated to reflect the new inform-ation established by the exhibition list. However, we did add a cool feature illustrating an image of the scene from In Old Boston, chalk, to make a list of all of the art work in the order we believe they were made and identify-ing what is the subject of the painting- - neighbor-hood or oyster house. |
01-04-2024
RESTORED! When Drifts Melt Fast This painting owned by the estate has deterior-ated so much over the past decade it was pack-ed and stored until we could get it restored. One of
the artist most cele-brated paintings, it was never sold and the rea-son may very well have been because RSW knew it would not last the test of time. |
01-11-2024
QUESTIONS In Apple Blossom Time A painting name we have no image for and only one record of (a news-paper article) comes into question. Is it really a painting or was the name mistaken for another painting omitted from the article? While we could not come to any answer with confidence, the questions tell an interest-ing story that links two paintings made at the same location, roughly at the same time- one with an unquestioned name and the other, nameless. The nameless one could very well be the painting by this name only we have no way of confirm-ing it. |
01-18-2024
NEW IMAGE Up the Winter Valley We recently came across a picture of this painting's sepia print that is better than the one we were using. It was found in the pictures Larch took
during his visit to the Smithsonian a couple of years back. It was found in the "Harold Grieve" papers of Woodward's collection. |
01-25-2024
SPECIAL ITEM In November As part of our artwork page audits we are also re-thinking the inform-ation we have for each piece and connecting it with other related pieces. For this 1946 painting, sold to the artist dear friend Ethel Dow, the related piece is a sketch made of the same scene sometime in the mid-1930s. RSW mentions in his painting diary that Ethel had been saving for several years to buy a painting and that this one, "seemed to hold her choice of 'everything'," and we are wondering if he had arranged this all intentionally? Read the story and see how we put a few things together indicating a poetic fate. |
01-31-2024
OTHERS In Early March This page has been reorganized and updated, however, there is now a question as to here the name came from because a label on the stretcher has a different name. In Keach's Barn A painting name with no image, but not hard to surmise the subject and scene of the painting we suspect might have been made special for Wood-ward's first Smith College exhibition. In New England Another painting name with no image. Still, we offer some possibilities of what the subject of this chalk drawing may be... |
11-11-2023
NEW GALLERY Award Winners Gallery The moment the idea came to us we realized it was necessary, for context, to assemble an image gallery solely devoted to Woodward's award winning paintings. There are twenty that we know of in his 37 year career. Two paintings won two awards each making it actually 18 total paintings. We pictures of 18 of the winners, and one is an image of a smaller version of the original. We also include the 3 paintings invited to 3 World Fairs as well as the four paintings to hang at the 1938 International Rotary Convention held in Boston. |
11-11-2023
MOST AWARDED Out the North Window One of only two multiple prize winning paintings by Woodward, this particular one held pretty high ex-pectation from the artist. In his painting diary he referred to his Honorable Mention prize at the Jordan Marsh show as "miserable" and made NO mention whatsoever of his First Prize for Best Still Life at the annual Ogunquit, Maine, exhib-ition. Oqunquit and Jordan Marsh are two of maybe just a handful of the most esteemed events in New England attracting the best of the best artist regionally and nationally. To receive any prize from either is a high and esteemed honor. |
11-11-2023
OTHERS... New England Heritage We have added new in-formation concerning the 1932 Boston Art Club ex-hibition. An article by art critic Alice Lawton offers new context to the im-portance of Woodward's 2nd prize. New England Origins The other double prize winning painting doesn't offer much in new inform-ation but deserves a fresh look. March Light A quick search of the buyer of this prize winning painting unearth yet another prominent owner whose name and occupation Woodward incorrectly cited in his painting diary. We made the correction and added new material to the page. |
11-11-2023
IDENTIFIED June Corn It has never been known what painting won 2nd Prize and the 1937 Albany Institute of History & Art event. Our research has revealed it was this painting. Not only that, Woodward was the only non-Hudson Valley artist invited to the show which was also exclusively held for artist who qualified for the The WPA Federal Art Project. We know Woodward qualified, however, to this day we do not know what he did with the grant, if anything. |
11-04-2023
NEW PICS "Gold" We had the great pleas-ure to visit the So. Ver-mont Art Center (SVAC) in Manchester, VT. They are in possession of an early Woodward painting and
the SVAC's Exhibi-tions Manager Alison Crites extended us the courtesy of pulling it out of storage for us to see and photograph. We learned some puzzling
things that has left us in a bind as to what to do about it which is a good problem to have. |
10-26-2023
CORRECTIONS 1. The Village in Spring 2. April in North Hadley 3. The Village In April & 4. April in the Village We found an old color image of what we assum-ed to be The Village in Spring (1). Only after a lot of work did we realize: It was NOT. Moreover, it can't be April in North Hadley (2) either because that painting is the origi-nal painting cut down to be renamed The Village in Spring! The chalk drawing, The Village in Spring, (3) was believed to be mislabeled in an article, which we now believe was actually referring to the image we found. Leaving its name to be- April in the Village (4) once believed to be the mixed up name of the chalk and not a real painting. Phew... |
10-21-2023
NEW PICS The Hungry Little Barn When we began to update and make new discoveries regarding this work of art we also reached out to its owner who we had not had contact with in nearly 16 years. It was a shot in the dark. We weren't sure any of our information would still be good. We posted our changes and promoted them only to receive new images a few days later. Thank you so much! |
10-18-2023
NEW PICS Winter Peace This painting recently appeared on an art website. No name was given for it. It was refer-red to generically as "Winter Landscape." Yet, we had a corresponding sepia print labeled, Winter Peace. Unfortunately, there are 3 paintings by that same name. One is definitely not this painting leaving two others. However, this one does not match RSW's diary comment. Go to the page for more! |
10-15-2023
NEW INFORMATION & UPDATED PAGE The Silo Paintings: New Silo, In the November Sun, and Unfinished Silo In the process of correcting two broken links on the New Silo artwork page we needed to check other related pages, which included
reviewing an essay written by this website's founder, Dr. Mark Purinton in 2006. It has held up well over time. We did not have anything to add to it.
The page just needed a reform-atting with some of the new tools we use throughout the website. I (Brian) informed Larch what I was doing
and he (Larch) tells me he just came across new material his father wrote to add to the Silo page! |
09-05-2023
NEW PICS Drying Nets; T Wharf We have known about this pastel painting for some time but we had NO idea what it could possibly entail. More than that, we believed the name was wrong. Did you know that there was once a wharf at the end of North Boston's Long Wharf? Or that it was called the "T" Wharf? We didn't. Also, we were under the impression it was made the year Woodward stayed in Bos-ton for a month- nope try again. Enjoy this read. |
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09-08-2023
NEW PICS An October Pasture We are digging deep into the mountains of folders and files collected since the start of the website. The objective is multifaceted, however, one of the primary objectives is to find images once thought lost forever. This is one of those photos. More over, this is one of Woodward's favorite subjects and this piece the prize of the 3 we know and probably the couple of others we suspect exist. |
Unnamed: Greylock from Heath We erred here... the sepia print we believed was an unnamed artwork was in fact the sepia print for
After Rain. |
09-15-2023
NEW PICS Unnamed: Late Summer in Halifax This sepia print of a painting was mislabeled a long time ago as the sepia for a painting named Aged Roofs. We recently found a better scan of the print and realized it was NOT Aged Roofs but an entirely different and unknown painting. Aged Roofs is a spring painting whereas this is a late summer scene. The better pic allowed us to see the sky was very different. It is the only "unnamed" paint-ing of the Halifax House we have. |
09-18-2023
NEW PICS Back of the Village It surprises us sometimes what we lose track of, such as a much better picture of a painting than what is currently on the website. This is one of those times... we recently came across an image of this painting from a few years ago that far exceeded the old, low resolution, image we had on its page. In updating the page we realized some other things missed when we last updated it over a year ago. Primarily, what makes it special in both time and space. |
09-24-2023
NEW PIC Unnamed: Keach's Drama This new image of the 40" x 50" oil painting comes to us from the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, VT. The painting was gifted to them by a close friend of the artist. It is a wintry and dramatic scene of the Keach Farm from a distance precar-iously hanging along the side of the hill. What is great about it is that it shows the entirety of the farm and we created a graphic linking the buildings to various paintings. |
09-22-2023
UPDATED Horizon of Heath As part of our update of the artwork pages, we are adding whatever context we can find connected to the artwork. For this painting we have discovered clue suggest-ing that this painting may be more important than realized. First RSW gives us his most detailed diary entry describing the piece, there is no evid-ence it exhibits, and then he sells it to a VIP just months after his Heath Studio burns... |
09-21-2023
UPDATED The Home Road This 20" x 40" painting has the distinction of being one of Woodward's rarest 1937 to 1945 ex-periments. The artist was toying with assembling paintings using combin-ations of other paintings. He made a series of wide panoramic paintings which had become the fashion of the time to hang on the mantle over the fireplace. This paint-ing is one of only five and his most ambitious that has a link to another that did not work at all. |
09-20-2023
UPDATED Hitchcock Elm This artwork page has been updated and we learn from Woodward's diary comments that it is similar to Out of the Past.
Only this version was sent to his friend Harold Grieve on the West Coast to sell. This was something the artist did when he had a subject
worthy painting and the original was bought by a highly regarding VIP. |
09-20-2023
UPDATED The Hungry Little Barn The advantage to going back and lending a criti-cal eye to each and every artwork page is just how much a fresh look can reveal. This pastel is a great example. Not only were we able to connect it to another, better known pastel and the same farm but the two paintings appear the same year, exhibit to-gether at the same show, and follow a similar traj-ectory across the country to land in the same state through different owners! |
08-27-2023
NEW PASTEL! Where the Stonewall Joins the Ledge This chalk drawing comes to us from its own-er with a story that it was a wedding gift, given in 1915. There is no reason to doubt the story. For one thing, Woodward loved personalizing his gifts. For another, al-though oil paintings dom-inate our attention, the pastel paintings were there from the beginning in 1918 and getting more praise. |
09-02-2023
NEW PICS The Lone Tree A trip to Stockbridge to visit their public library, and have some lunch at the country store of the Rockwell mural of Main St. fetched us a new
picture of this painting. It also revealed some other things that clears up some confusion and confirmed other things. |
08-15-2023
PAINTING STORY Heart of New England If it has not become ob-vious yet, it soon will. We are making a concerted effort, in part as tribute to Paul Harvey's, "... and now you know The
REST of the Story," feature of his radio program to look at the backstory of certain paintings for greater context. |
06-21-2023
UPDATED The Three Barns This was updated a couple of months ago as part of our efforts to bring together and link exhibitions with their articles. This is one of those paintings that because we do not have the greatest of pictures, it gets neglected. If you do not know this, Woodward did not like neglect and so we gave this page some love. We connect it to another, better image we have of the same barns from a different angle along with the praise it got in a newspaper clipping. |
07-09-2023
UPDATED Opalescent April With no image of this painting, it is one of the overlooked but its name is important, or rather we say opalescence is important to Woodward. But that is another story for another time. What is of import on this page is its role in drawing our attention to Woodward's handling of the situation AFTER his Hiram home and studio fire. On this page is the article where he addresses the rumors and misinformation being published in defense of his reputation. |
06-28-2023
CORRECTION Gray New England Since the beginning of the website, this painting's name was listed as "Grey NE" due to contradicting inform-ation. The evidence was looking us right in the face but it was from a traditionally inaccurate source. It took us a while to comb through all of the information we have and found enough evidence to change the name and we share the story with you. |
06-27-2023
A GOLDEN RULE The Golden Month & The Golden Slope We have long suspected that the names of both these paintings are related to the Golden Ratio more than the season of autumn
(though still related). But the Golden Ratio (based on the Fibbiaci Sequence showing the natural proportions of distribution found in nature).
Proportion is important to composition and you will find the aspect called the Golden Spiral in a large number of beautiful art work. Woodward
is no exception to this, only with these two paintings the spiral is notably intentional, thus the name. |
06-15-2023
PAINTING STORY Grace of Years Another one of those painting stories that has an odd journey... from being bought by the new owner of the Halifax (VT) House, to being returned to Woodward, it's exhibition record, being part of the October 1946 issue of American Artist, to selling again at the Founder's Show of the Grand Central Art Gallery in New York City. |
06-20-2023
SOME CONTEXT Great Faith in God Alone We are making an effort to offer some greater context to Woodward's early work. One of those facets is his interest in making Illuminations. It is an art form with a long history and tradition tied to the undercurrect of Woodward's faith and aspirations. It is important not to underestimate how powerful its draw is to him. It is primordial in its origin. |
01-19-2023
A NEW STORY From a May Pasture This painting's story is almost comically tragic. It is a personal favorite of RSW's. Its buyer dies just days before its comple-tion. It exhibits at a show with another painting of a familiar subject by a fri-end of Woodward's that gets more attention as well as RSW's ire. It is the first incident of RSW's defense of his brand from being co-opted by others. |
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05-01-2023
AN ESSAY The Evolution of the Window Picture Painting, Part 1 In the first of what will be 3 parts, we introduce to you the evolution of Woodward's well-known and highly recogizable Window Pictures Paintings. Part I is primarily a build up, revealing the first "window" drawing we know of and how the letter that accompanies it holds many of the traits and values RSW will incorporate into his Window Picture Paintings nearly twenty years later. But that is not all! We will share with you who we believe is their inspiration and how she literally and later figuratively appears in the original paintings perhaps as a tribute to her if only unconsciously so. We will also connect RSW's early commercial work and intimate Redgate paintings as the being precursor to the art form. |
06-03-2022
PAGE UPDATE August Shade When we heard that the Deerfield Academy was going to level the "little brown house" on Albany Street we took another look at this page and introduce
the artist romantic tendencies. |
10-18-2022
PAGE UPDATE December Farm This is an important scene for Woodward only we are not entirely sure why. We suspect it holds an underlying poetic irony, a tragic one. Its story has prompted us to begin an essay exploring its mysteries but for now... enjoy our page update featuring Jeanette Matthews beautiful reviews. |
04-14-2023
A NEW STORY When Drifts Melt Fast In this story, we call Woodward out on being misleading. He claims "it never sold" but the truth is that he never found the right home for what maybe one of the most celebrated and beloved paintings in his entire oeuvre. Read the story of this award-winning painting and see if you agree... |
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03-12-2022
NEW DISCOVERY From My Studio Window Woodward made a num-ber of small errors in his Painting Diary. He didn't start the diary until the early 1940s and so a lot of it was from memory. In regard to this painting, however, he may have made his most egregious mistake. It was the wrong painting entirely! More surprising is who OWNS this painting. |
03-15-2023
CORRECTION The South Window, 1928 It all adds up... the size matches, where it exhibited matches, and the good fortune of discovering a photograph from the 1928 exhibit where this painting is hung next to a known 40" x 50" painting is all we needed to prove this painting is the one on the cover of Country Life Magazine. |
09-17-2022
NEW PAINTING Unnamed: Haying Time in New England We have received a few newly discovered paint-ings through their owners who graciously send us their pictures. This signed but unnamed painting is an early 1920s oil on canvas. It is very unique in that it shows a slop-ing field being hayed and you can just make out the work horses and cart use to do it. |
08-03-2022
EXPERIMENTAL The Chambered Nautilus In our greatest indulg-ence yet, we explore what this painting could possibly be since we have no image of it. Furthermore, we also speculate on the sym-bolism that may be ap-pealing to Woodward that holds great meaning to the artist. It is part of our effort to explore a more intimate look inside his interest. |
07-06-2022
A NEW STORY An Autumn Song Our work in processing all of the news clippings and articles in Woodward's scrapbook is producing opportunities to reveal some things about paintings for which we have no images. This is a great example, and we offer two insights of import to its name and month. |
04-19-2023
NEW CONTEXT God's Quiet Acre More on our effort to get all the article in RSW's scrapbooks to the web-site, here we paid special attention to this chalk drawing. Jeanette Matt-hews of the Springfield Republican is a great art reviewer and one of our favorites. Note what she says about this painting... |
01-23-2022
IN TRIBUTE Miss Mabel Raguse We are making every effort to update many of the Scrapbook pages originated by Dr. Purinton. Here we add some new perspectives on Miss Mabel touting her as one of Woodward's best customers despite her limited resources. Something RSW's greatly appreciated. |
12-22-2022
NEW PICS Unnamed: Guilford Farm; Conway We had the great plea-sure to be invited to take new pictures of this un-named and unsigned painting. There is a ques-tion as to if it is a finished piece. There are missing details RSW would have normally filled in. It was sold after his death by his family. |
07-01-2022
NEW PAINTING Unnamed: Barnyard Blanket You may have already seen this painting of Woodward's Hiram Woodward Place barn and yard just after a snow storm because it appear-ed as the featured art-work for the month of February in this year's Buckland Historical Society's calendar. |
04-04-2023
ADDED INFO Full Bloom If you want to know how special a painting was to Woodward- look at where he exhibited it. In one of the best examples of a painting being over-looked, this is it. This page best illustrates how important our work to fully vet and add all the in-formation we have on where a painting hung. |