This website is a tribute to the life and artwork of Western Massachusetts artist Robert Strong Woodward (1885 -1957).
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The 2026 Calendar,
New England Song, to benefit the
Buckland Historical Society's
annual fund raising effort
has officially ended. Thank you to all who participated.
We are always grateful and appreciative of your support.

You can still view the 2026 calendar, along with the 18
years of previous issues by clicking on the link below.


CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE CALENDAR GALLERY

Current Announcements


We   Hope   This
Trend Continues!

  About a year ago or so I read an article about how researchers and scientist were using 18th and 19th century landscape paintings to study and analyze the trees and fauna seen on the canvases. It is too long ago for me to remember what they were learning from the subject, but I remember thinking what a good idea it was.


Art has probably been used to learn culture related things by historians for centuries. I do not know if there is a history of the hard sciences using art to further their understanding. The article made it seem as if it was a new thing or at the very least, some-thing that was trending.


Then a few months ago we receive an email from a French researcher asking us for pictures (and permission) to use paintings of Woodward's Elm trees for re-search he is doing for the, National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment- France's leading government-funded research body focused on agriculture and forest-ry. It is then that it occurred to me the significance of the request. Dutch Elm Disease wiped out the elm trees (except for one town in Maine). In many respects, paint-ings and old photos are all that remain for study.



  This past month, we get an email from a British artist curating a website dedicated to the portrayal of geraniums in art, saying, "I feel as though I have died and gone to heaven when I gaze upon Mr Woodwards' oeuvre of artworks..." and expressed his interest in using certain paintings on his website! I will give more details at a later time when ready. It is a terrific reminder (and flattering) why we do what we do, and why the work is important. Why Woodward was important...





Honoring Barbara (1926-2025)

  It is with great sadness that we announce the loss of Barbara J. (Shippee) Purinton, wife of web-site founder Dr. Mark Purinton. She passed Dec. 9th, just six months from her 100th birthday.

Though not directly involved with the website she was count-ed on in numerous ways, parti-cularly as an eagle-eyed proof-reader.

Born in Shelburne Falls, and earning a degree in Library Sciences from Simmons Col-lege, she was also our resource for questions about the rule of alphabetizing things like titles, etc. She worked along side Dr. Mark as he built his country medical practice and was instru-mental in helping Dr. Mark pull together and organize all of the resources used to build this website in its early days.

She was the quintessential New Englander, modest and as tough as nails. Her pies were among the best I have ever had, espec-ially her rhubarb pie. She will be missed dearly.

❤ Brian Charles Miller,
Website Content Director

Monthly Featured Artwork from our 2026 Calendar:  Early Sugaring #1

Early Sugaring #1
This painting by Robert Strong Woodward, Early Sugaring #1 is the February view in the 2026 Buckland Historical Society Woodward Calendar.


QUOTE OF THE MONTH ON WOODWARD:

"The style of the artist is emphatic in its sentiment; it evolves from conviction.
Nothing is partly done; nothing is wanting in significance. It is easy to
understand why people are drawn to an expression of this kind.

The Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 1928


Website's Key Features


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.



Woodward's Second Love...

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 dairy 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. Next he 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 Artwork Galleries

The artwork galleries consist of nearly a thousand known works of art created by Wood-ward. 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 37 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.


Our Recollections Scrapbook

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.


Painting Stories Scrapbook

This is our "story behind the paintings" collection. It includes some of Wood-ward's favorite subjects, such as, his neighbor Herbert 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.



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Arnold C. Purinton, May 17, 1941 - December 6, 2025

I did want to take a little bit of extra time to spend on Dr. Mark's brother Arnold. Over the last couple of years, we had the good fortune to visit Arnold several times. He was such a character, and very different than Dr. Mark in many ways, but he also had a way of bringing out Dr. Mark's sillier side (see Arnold's RSW recollection link below). Despite the 14 year difference in age, the two were close.


Our visits with Arnold were always entertaining. He had such a bright spirit and wonderful sense of humor but what impressed me most was how much he loved to see new paintings we located over the past few years. He wanted to know everything we knew about them. I do have a couple of regrets. The first is that we never really questioned Arnold about things we asked all people we have found who had met Woodward personally. There always felt like we had more time. The second regret is the most painful. Arnold never got to see the exhibit of Woodward's work at the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield last spring. The weather was so bad. There was so much rain almost every weekend that the opportunity to go get him and bring him to the show never really presented itself. Also, he was such a big guy, we never really had the space to fit him in the car and we thought it would take two people to get it done meaning we were usually a man short. I now regret that... Sorry Arnold, Brian


Read Arnold's wonderful obituary by clicking HERE. The page will open in a new tab.


Recent Website Updates

OUR CURRENT PROJECT MISSION:
We are looking to add greater depth of insight that fleshes out more context than we have ever had about Woodward's career as well as his personal values and principles. The stories just begin to tell themselves. And something like that results from processing the information one has available, turning it into empirical (measurable) data. Once it has been compiled, it then needs to be interpreted and analyzed and you start to see patterns and connections that are not always obvious despite being right under your nose for years.


More daunting will be the Scrapbook portion of the website. As of right now, the information under the Redgate Studio, the Hiram Woodward Place, and the Heath Pasture House are all woefully out-of-date. It is a top priority for us to update these pages, especially the Hiram Place, for which there is so much never-before-known information to add.


In addition to the studio pages, we have been assembling as many as 15 new Scrapbook pages and just as many in the queue for a much needed update. We suggest you go to our new Miss Mabel page to see what we mean. There are also important people in Woodward's life we have neglected to give their due. We are now distinguishing some of these individuals as "patrons", "benefactors", and sponsors. One page in particular will reveal just how critical one woman was to Woodward having any career at all.

UPDATE: February 04, 2025

We finally have the Norton Farm Five (our name for the series of paintings Woodward made during his visit to Riverton, Vermont, in 1928) behind us, and we can get back to work on the ST Gallery and the website audit. The gist of why this took so long can be summed up by the order in which these paintings were exhibited. The earliest made oil canvas was the last of the bunch to exhibit! Another canvas, Woodward insisted in his painting diary, was made in 1928 and did not exhibit until six years later, in 1934. It really was difficult to sort it all out. The crux of our theories about these things centers on Mrs. Dresser and Woodward's terrible habit of being inconsistent with the information he provides in his painting diary.

Moving on from that, a great majority of our spare time this past month was spent digging through every picture ever taken of several paintings featuring geraniums for what we consider a worthy project being put together by a British artist. A grueling process, but worth it. We have learned that we do not always have to go out and take new pictures of paintings. In many cases, with the new picture-editing methods we have learned, the old pictures are seen in a new light. It enlarges our pool of resources, and we can now do much more with less. We are very pleased..

Finally, for the first time ever, while compiling our monthly updates, I could not fill out the five slots we have come to use each month. I did not get to continue with the ST Gallery after I finished the Norton Farm Five pages. Ultimately, I decided that the empty space would now symbolize the void left by the loss of Barbara and Arnold. Many blessings to you all. ❤

BCM

February, 2026 ALL SORTED

Last month's difficulty regarding the 5 paintings of the Norton Farm has been worked out. You can visit any one of the five art work pages and get the gist of what we believe happened after RSW's 1928 visit to Mrs. Dresser, but visit each page for details specific to the painting of that page. In order of appearance...


The Saddleback Barn; Vermont, 1928
Vermont Barns (Ck), 1929
Vermont Barns (Oil), 1934
Up in Vermont, 1935
In Vermont, 1942

Note that the first oil canvas made is the last to exhibit... read to learn why.


February, 2026 ALSO...

The Hay Barn

This pastel was suspected to have been made on the same 1928 visit to Mrs. Dresser in Riverton, VT. That was proven to be not only incorrect but impossible. This pastel could only have been made in 1927 and when one looks closely enough, it becomes clear RSW is to the west, not east, of Camel's Hump mountain.


The Patched Roof

We believe this is from the same farm as The Hay Barn above. It however, did not exhibit until the J.H. Miller show along with The Saddle-back Barn. Visit any of these pastel art work pages to learn why RSW made more pastels than oils in that time period.


February, 2026 NEW PICS

Under the Summer Window

We continue to work diligently to get better pictures of Woodward's paintings and given the recent interest in geraniums we scoured our files to see if there was maybe a better image or a pic we can work with using our new skills in editing. We succeeded... for both items listed here.



December Window

This beautiful painting picture had a waxy sheen in some of the darker areas which can be distracting to view. We now know how to remove it and the difference is amazing.


February, 2026 UPDATED

We have two Scrapbook pages related to Arnold Purinton, Dr. Mark's youngest brother who recently passed. One is a recollection of his from childhood and involves Woodward. The other is under our "tributes" section of the Scrapbook Gallery. It is a picture gallery featuring Arnold's skill and craftsmanship building miniatures of historic Buckland homes, including the Southwick home and studio. In honor of Arnold, we updated the pages and the pictures.


"A Memory of RSW by
    Arnold Purinton"


The Southwick Miniature
Dec. 2025 NEW DISCOVERY!

Winter Pleasures

This very personal and unusual Window Picture Painting came to us from its owner. It is a painting RSW arranged a bit hap-hazardly with great intent-ion. A snow covered land-scape outside the north window with a newspaper, beech tree branch with oriole nest still attached, a tin bowl of hickory nuts with some tossed about the window shelf... and in the display corner sits last month's featured new pic-ture, Portrait of a Shadow.


Unnamed: Winter Pleasures

This is the painting seen in the sepia print image we have. We had to make a new page for it because it does not match the painting above. This canvas has More Snow Tomorrow in the display corner.


Dec. 2025 NEW PICTURES
AND INFORMATION!


September Mountain

It has been a long wait for us but we finally have a picture of this wonderful painting once owned by Mrs. Julia Dresser. However, as she aged and knew her time was nearing, she gave this painting and another she owned back to RSW who, after her death in 1937, sold it to another dear friend in Newport, Rhode Island.

Another "Late Summer" painting, this was made from the Dresser property, looking north toward Stowe, VT and Mt. Manfield.


December, 2025 NEW PICS

The Portal

Dozens of pictures taken over several years is what it took to finally get a suitable picture of this very personal 1919 paint-ing by RSW. These early paintings are so hard to photograph. Even when you think you have good pics, they do not hold up when you look at them on a computer screen.

We added a lot of new information regarding the meaning and metaphor of this uniquely named canvas... oh, and we also added it to the growing "Late Summer" gallery which is approaching 100 paintings.


December, 2025 UPDATED
WITH NEW INSIGHTS


The Trumpeting Angel

In our artwork page audit we came across The Patient Angel (below ⮟) and remembered we had new pictures of a Gabriel Weathervane for this artwork page. It turns out we also did a new scan of the only picture we have of this painting. During that process we realize that its appearance in the newspaper held more meaning than meets the eye. It's a good read...


The Patient Angel

Two years later the painting above AND this canvas exhibit together furthering our theory...


December, 2025 NOTABLE
UPDATED PAGES


Red Barn

An unusual scene for Woodward described in a newspaper review in 1922 draws our attention in this artwork page audit.


The Patched Roof

Another painting in our audit but is also connect-ed to the 1928 J.H. Miller Gallery exhibit and more Vermont themed work fitting with the other updates for this month.


The Quiet Village

This only member of the "Q" gallery stands alone in subject as well. The Heath scene appears seven theme gallery pages, a record!


Nov., 2025 NEW PICTURES!

Portrait of a Shadow

Woodward's most loved painting has new pictures and we could not be more grateful. We have always had a picture, but it was mislabeled as covered in our updates in Sept. '25. We also had early Koda-chrome pictures of the painting but given it was the early days of color film, the picture did not show a true represent-ation of the canvas but now we do...

This is also an opportunity to explore RSW's love of November. We use this painting to dive deeper into the topic that we suspect embodies that love.


Nov., 2025 NEW PICTURE

Winter Peace

A standout at this past Spring's exhibition in Deerfield, we took new pictures of this canvas doing our best to capture its stoic palette that simply left people staring at it for long periods of time. While it appears to be almost entirely in scales of grey, a closer look reveals the subtly in which Woodward used rich purples and greens for its depth.



Spring Tapestry

Because we updated Out the Bedroom Window, we also added new pictures to this page, as well as In the Winter Hills.


November, 2025 UPDATED

Out of The Past

Again, as part of our audit of every artwork page, this page has been up-dated and reorganized. All the images used on the page have been re-edited or re-worked. There is a bonus section on this page where we provide links to all the parties related to the subject. We recommend you do the virtual tour of the book.


Out the Bedroom Window

This page has been updated but not only that, we have added new pictures giving the scene added context. This is a painting Woodward made from his bedroom window, which one, we are not sure. Still with the evidence we provide, we narrow down the mystery.


November, 2025 UPDATED

Pasture Gold

Our update of this page includes color pictures of the Heath Pasture Studio, and helped us realize that when the studio was finished RSW made a third of all Beech tree paintings in a matter of months afterward. We also explore more of the artist love of November...


Passing A Barn At Noon

This page has been updated as part of our audit. It has been reorg-anized but we also made a considerable effort to find exactly where this barn was located from RSW's diary comments. We got close but did not find a place matching the painting.


November, 2025 NEW PAGES

We recently discovered an article for the 1928 home exhibit hosted by Miss Anna Koch listing six previously unknown pastels. We have now added them to the website:


Christian Hill

Dramatic Vermont

The Little House by the
  Road, Colrain


Monument Mountain

North of Monadnock

Up the Pasture Road

While we do not have pictures of these pastels, we do offer comparable paintings and additional information.


October, 2025 KEY UPDATES

Invitation

This painting made in 1942 was sold in New York, but ended up in Boston. It went missing briefly, and found again a couple months before RSW's death. It was one of the artist most praised canvases when hung at one of his most popular exhibits. For as much as we do know, there is much more we do not.


Open Doors

A painting of the same subject as Invitation (above), was painted for his friend Clifford Rich-mond to present to the Easthampton (MA) Public Library where it still hangs today. We've added new color pictures taken of the scene in its day.


October, 2025 NEW PICS

Grey Heights

When have said it many times before that we will always try to get a better picture of a painting when the opportunity presents itself. Despite having updating the pic of this painting 10 months ago. It hung at the Colrain Hist-orical Society's annual art exhibit and we had excel-lent light and took more! Also, the event was out-standing. Be sure to catch it next year.


Out of The Forest

The pictures we were using of this painting were long over due for a re-fresh. It is a large painting and old and difficult to take down from the wall... But it was worth it to see the difference between 20 year old pics and today.Check it out!


October, 2025 NEW UPDATES

Orchard Window

Every painting has a story. Besides its subject, it has its journey. Like the canvas, Invitation, it hung at the well reviewed 1942 New York City exhibition, which happens to have become a story in its own right.

It was complete coinci-dence that Orchard Window was just two pages away from Invi-tation in our artwork page audit. Yet, Orchard Window would not let itself be overshadowed. The Grand Central Art Gallery selected it for its annual Founders' Day fundraiser where it was sold. Sixty-five years later, it reappears in 2010, when it exhibits at the von Liebig Gallery in Naples, FL. Check it out!


October, 2025 NEW UPDATES

Old Heights

Using newspaper descriptions of this painting from the Boston papers we have a theory as to the subject of this painting we have no picture of and we offer you those options. A pastel, it reportedly hung at the 1930 Tercentennial Exhibition along with New England Drama. Some-thing we were completely unaware prior. We have added it to our exhibit records. It also exhibited the first six months of the crazy year 1931, the theme of last months updates. (below )


On The Waterfront

This page has been updated as part of our audit. It is worth a visit if you want to see something out of ordinary for Woodward.


October, 2025 NEW UPDATES

On The Road to Halifax, Vermont

Here is another example of using what we know to link a painting title to a similar subject. This painting went to RSW's patron-saint, Mrs. Ada Moore's sister in California. We have added pictures and some background information.



On to the Winter Porch

New information on the year this painting was made makes it one of the earliest Window Picture Paintings made in the Southwick studio. Woodward did not start painting these types of paintings with regularity until after 1937. It is once again, one of the main reasons we are doing this audit of the artwork pages.


Sept., 2025 NEW FINDING

September Evening

As part of our invest-igation into The Little Farmhouse and Portrait of a Shadow conflict we were able to identify, from newspaper descriptions, this previously unnamed painting in our collection as September Evening.

This discovery and many others came as result of this endeavor into the confounding four exhibit-ions held at the Standish Gallery from February to June in 1931. We have broke down all of the paintings in circulation at this time and what hung where and what over-lapped. This detour took us more than a whole week to sort out and makes up much of our August updates.

See graph below ⮟


A LINE GRAPH OF THE TOTAL NUMBER SPOTS "PAINTINGS" FILLED FROM 1930 TO 1947

The line graph above needs some explanation. The numbers are how many exhibit spots his paintings filled throughout the year, and NOT the total number of paintings. For example, as we explain above, Woodward had 89 total paintings circulating in the first six months of 1931 and those paintings filled 137 opens spots on walls in the numerous shows he was committed to and for the whole year he topped more than 250 spots in all.

You can see that Woodward was preparing for 1931 long before it arrived. He filled less than 25 spots at exhibits the year before, and below his average in 1929 filling 66 spots. It was Woodward's success in 1930, Boston's year-long Tercentennial (300th) birthday celebration where he took two top honors at two separate events, including one of only four gold medals awarded at the Tercentennial exhibit held in Horti-cultural Hall. That success translated into his first shows in New York City, New Haven, CT, Northampton, MA, and Syracuse, NY. 1931 is far-and-away the biggest year of his career when it come to exhibiting.


Sept., 2025 NEW PICS

The Leaping Brook

We have previously talked about our new method of photographing paintings, especially hard to capture paintings like the pastels. Here is a new picture of this outstanding painting.



Early Sugaring (1920)

Our new method of taking pictures of paintings helps cut down glare and gives a truer depiction of the colors Woodward used. Check out the reds, blues, and purples of this beauty!


Sept., 2025 BIG UPDATE

White Clouds

Our other major discov-ery in our investigation of the 1931 Myles Standish exhibit produced the identification of this paint-ing. It started with a recognizable pattern in a terrible picture and led to confirmation via news-paper descriptions. MORE ⮟


May Clouds

This is the new name of a previously unnamed painting. We are always happy to have a name for a painting. This canvas was critical in helping us determine the above painting's subject.


Sept., 2025 BIGGER UPDATE

The Little Farmhouse

From the earliest days of the website, it was believed that the name above was the original name of Portrait of a Shadow. The confusion originated when a picture of, Portrait of a Shadow, was incorrectly caption in the Boston Globe. How-ever, RSW himself made matters worse with a story he told two critics... MORE ⮟


Portrait of a Shadow

This is RSW's "most loved" canvas. It was important to him in many ways. We tell its whole story...


Sept., 2025 NEW AUDITS

The following are highlights of our recently audited pages:


October Pageant (1923)

Confusion over this painting, its name and its year has been cleared up with the discovery of a clipping.


The Old Barn

We add ANOTHER painting to the seven others made of the Keach's Little Red Barn interior!


October Gold

we recently learned this highly honored painting has another feather. It was in the top ten most popular canvases of the 1930 "Boston Art Week" celebration exhibit.


August, 2025 NEW PICS

Waiting For Spring (Oil)

As we refine of photo taking techniques and skills, we cannot resist the opportunity to get new pictures when given the opportunity. Window picture paintings are especially hard because of the dark areas around the windows tend to reflect light when there is too much. It is a delicate balance to make sure we get as accurate an image as possible.

This award winning canvas is certainly deserving of our best and we captured it beautifully. Enjoy!


August, 2025 NEW PICS

When Corn Is Ripe

A one of a kind pastel for Woodward, we have never captured it in a way that was satisfactory until now. The new image is as true to what you see when standing in front of it as we have ever gotten... the reds, greens, and yellows all holding there our place without dis-coloring each other.

Woodward's chalk drawings are the hardest of all to take pictures of because they are under glass and the glass panes are often in varying conditions making each a unique challenge.


August, 2025 NEW PICS

October (1919)

Neither this painting or the one below are new pictures as it were. They both are old pictures newly rediscovered originals that we were able to apply our new editing techniques to get the best out of them. The image for this canvas is a huge improvement on the previous.


October in Dorset

Again, this is an old-new picture we found misplaced in the wrong folder. The original image being more than 20 years old was small and not great in the first placed was made better by us than what we had. We also found a very similar picture of the mountain in the artwork to match up the two.


Aug., 2025 NEW ESSAY

Winter Evening Stream

Brian has been working on updating this original 2011 Painting Story essay on Woodward's Winter Evening Stream (WES) paintings by Dr. Mark for months. Need-less to say, it got quite out of hand. We have so much more information about these paintings than was available when Doc originally wrote it. There is now far more Brian than Doc, but it couldn't be helped... Doc was on to something really profound. He simply did not have all the information necessary to put it all together. In this essay you will learn how these 14 known canvas-es are critical mediations at transitional times in the artist life.


Aug., 2025 UPDATES

Our audit of the website's artwork pages continues. We are up to An October Pasture in the OPQR Gallery. Below, we select-ed a few outstanding pages worth another look...


October (1926 - 29)

A totally new page reflecting our realization there are 3 paintings by the single name "October."


October Flame

A rear view of Wood-ward's much loved maple in Mrs. Griswold's pasture for the pasture itself.


October Pageant, 1923

A lot of confusion surrounding this painting's name has been sorted out and confirmed to be the 1923 canvas.


July, 2025 ALL NEW STUFF

New England Winter

Not only did we get a new image, though still from a newspaper, it lead to dis-covering that this painting was also honored for a "prize in painting" at the 1929, Stockbridge Art Association's annual event. Digging deeper we realize this canvas needs to be placed among RSW's most editorial pieces. It hung at every major exhibit he had after 1930 and was bought by a serious collector, and Amherst alum.


George Dupont Pratt

Since we were straight-ening out New England Winter, we also updated its buyer, Mr. Pratt's profile page, adding new information and pictures.


July, 2025 NEW PICS

Early Moonlight

This painting, recently exhibited at the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield (MA) has never had a good image. For years these early dusk-time, dark wooded interiors, have perplexed us. RSW used a varnish to pre-serve them and it darken-ed over time placing a seemingly impenetrable barrier over them.

Using a powerful light with a polarized filter, along with a camera fitted with a polarized lens, we managed to reduce the glare and capture the true beauty of this emotionally convincing scene.


July, 2025 UPDATED

My Winter Window Shelf

This page has been updated, including updating the picture we already had using new editing methods for color correction and balancing. Along with these updates, we also updated the 2007 scrapbook story researc-hed and written by Janet Gerry. More on this below ⮟


My Winter Window Shelf:
A Painting Story

As hard as it may be to believe, this painting caused its share of trouble for RSW in the most amusing way... he couldn't wait to get rid of it! New layout and pic-tures added caption by Brian.


July, 2025 UPDATED

My Winter Shelf
My Grandmother's Lamp
Near the Sky

All three of the artwork pages above have been updated, not only with new information or updated old info...
My Winter Shelf, forever confused with its sibling The Window: A Still Life and Winter Scene, is designed for it to stand on its own...
My Grandmother's Lamp, was missing an incredible distinction. It was sent to New York City for the 1932, National Academy of Design's annual show.
Near the Sky holds a couple of mysteries we do our best to sort out. Visit the page to learn more.


July, 2025 UPDATED

Accolades & Awards

The Accolades & Awards gallery needed to be up-dated after the discovery that New England Winter received an honor from Stockbridge in 1929. That now makes 20 canvases to get recognition at prestigious shows and events. Three of those painting were honored twice!


Apples Gallery

We missed a couple of paintings where apples, particularly where the tree themselves appear. These additions to this gallery has pushed it up one slot, past Stunning Skies, for fifth place in the most frequent items list.


June, 2025 NEW IMAGE

October in Buckland

To go along with this month's "Featured Artwork" above, "The Road to Church," this new image of the same subject in the wonderful colors of fall just came to us from its owner. we also learned more about another painting just outside the view of this canvas and so we also updated...


The Road to Church

... which shows a sugar house to the right of the scene that Woodward painted facing the opposite direction, thus giving us a look at where he positioned himself to make three canvases of the village center.


June, 2025 NEW IMAGE

My Christmas Shelf

It is still not a great picture because it is captured from an old newspaper clipping but it is better than nothing. Also, we have updated the information on the page to include other paintings it is related to and their differences.

One of the more surpris-ing facts discovered was that it was made much earlier than previously known. This earlier date makes the canvas Wood-ward's first, true, Still Life painting. It does have a window in it but the window is not the main feature of the canvas. RSW only made eleven still lifes in his career and he only made them bet-ween 1926 and 1931.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

The Blue Couch, essay

We updated this recol-lection written by Dr. Mark more than a decade ago.It is a first had ac-count of his experience and knowledge of how this painting got its name. A name Woodward did not really like very much but because he allowed owners to name their paintings if they did not already have name, he honored it. It even has its own painting diary entry.

Brian then adds his own commentary on the name, giving his theory as to why Woodward did not necessarily like it. Yet still, ultimately he finds a remote connection that gives the name some meaningful relevance to how Woodward felt about his Heath Pasture.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

Mr. Franklin's House, essay

This is a wonderful story about the work that went into finding out the loca-tion of this house Wood-ward painted at least three times in and around 1930. It was not easy because, in truth, the house was not owned by Mr. Franklin... he rented it. Woodward obviously did not know that or if he did, because Mr. Franklin was living in it - it was his home.

The page has been refor-matted and all of the pictures have been up-dated. We have even added some new ones!

Many thanks to Randy Frazier with the help of Norma Thibodeau to get to the bottom of this mystery many years ago.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED INFO

Bernard Hyman, profile

In one of our more em-barrassing gaffs, this page has been updated with the correct and substantiated information.

Years ago we received an email from someone be-lieving to know the missing gap in proven-ance for this painting. While this person did not lie to us or intend to mis-lead us, nor was the information wrong. The information was merely an incredible coincidence of one thing having no connection to the other.

We now have the correct information as to how the Dwyer sisters came to jointly own the painting, Contentment, and it is un-impeachable


Apr. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

Winter Evening Stream

A project three months in the making and a month too later. The shear amount of new inform-ation alone surprised even us. In 2011, Dr. Mark published an essay on the subject of Wood-ward's Winter Evening Stream paintings (WES for short). Fourteen years later we had new images of many of the paintings, as well as a better grasp on the years they were made.

The new page is long. It is structure in three sec-tions starting with Doc's original copy, followed by its addendum written by Brian. The last part is Brian's commentary with supporting data that breaks down what makes the WES paintings so unique.


Apr. 2025 NEW PICS/INFO

Snowing on the Hill

This page has been updated and pictures have been re-edited using new methods that offers a much better look at this award winning paintings.


Miss Johnson's

This page has been updated as part of our artwork page audit. The bonus is that examining the picture of this painting we noticed how perfecting it appeared to fit the Golden Spiral. We laid our golden spiral over the image and it lined up in such a way it is worth sharing.


April, 2025 NEWLY ADDED

Silver Clouds Over Equinox

This artwork page has been added to the list of complete works. It was one of the painting names we discovered in our audit of the So. Vermont Artist Assoc. brochures. Only, this painting was also very well reviewed by critic Royal Cortizzos making it stand out from the others.


Silver Sky Over Equinox

This artwork page was updated as well and is believed to be related to the pastel above. Our image is terrible but it at least shows what the pastel above resembles.


Apr. 2025 MORE UPDATES

Most of our efforts this month was on the WES essay honoring Dr. Mark. However, we still managed to update the following artwork pages.



May Woods

Midwinter

Mild Winter

A Mild Winter Day

Mount Equinox in April
April, 2025 RE-VISIT

Not that we haven't given you more than enough to keep you busy for at least the rest of winter... we do encourage you to visit, if you haven't already, some of Doc's Scrapbook essay we have updated and added new information...


A Tribute to Local Schoolteacher: Miss Mabel Raguse

⮞ Famed Collector: Francis Patrick Garvan

⮞ Brian's essay on the mystery of: December Farm Painting

March, 2025 PAST DUE!

Out of The Mist

We have updated this page with "new" pictures. New is in quotes because the pictures are not recent. In fact, they are nearly a decade old. They got lost in the mix somehow, and put aside only to get lost track of.

Better late than never, and the pics where taken with the same camera we still use today. The timing of it is also exciting because not only do we have great pictures of this beautiful painting, but it comes just after locating a contemporary friend from the same year, In the Sugar Bush.


March, 2025 WHAT THE...

Where Glaciers Passed

Speaking of over looking something... neither Larch or Brian noticed for more than 15 years that this painting had been cut down by Woodward, and significantly so, by more than 40%. We illustrate to difference and how we made the discovery, along with some other new information.


May Heights

This fell right in our lap as part of our artwork page audit. This painting, which we have no image of may be either (1) its own separate painting related to another known painting by its similar name... OR, (2) it does NOT exist at all. It might be a mistake similar to what we discuss with Old New England (Oil). A reporter or type-setter at the newspaper may have heard the name wrong... Nothing definitive so again we encourage you to read the story.


March, 2025 UPDATED

Mary Lyon Church, Crayon

We have two known crayon drawing made by Woodward and when we say crayon, we mean crayon, not pastel or chalk. We do not know what prompted him to make the drawings but they are exceptionally well done. The crayons are not signed which makes sense. They were not done for professional reasons, yet, perhaps it was simply a matter of experimentation. We do not know.


Mary Lyon's Church, Oil

As it is with the summary above, this page was updated as part of our audit of each and every artwork page. Some updates yield, new information, or disproves information previously posted.


Mary Lyon's Hill

Updated as part of our audit of each and every artwork page.


March, 2025 ALL SETTLED

Old New England, Oil

This is one of the best examples of correcting a long made error and this painting has finally found its true name. The error was made from a news-paper clipping where this canvas was the featured artwork. However, it was captioned "Landscape" and without more inform-ation, Dr. Mark felt com-pelled to stick with that until we learn otherwise, which we have... Read the story!



Old New England, Chalk

This new pastel came to us recently by way of a gallery that was selling it. You've seen the pictures because we announced the sale last month. It has since been sold and no longer available. How-ever, this artwork holds a particularly special place at a special time and its story says a lot about how RSW felt about it.


March 2025 NEW PAGES

Below are 4 more of 19 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

- Peru in Summer
- The Green Bottle
- Mount Stratton from
   Peru, Oil


1- Pastel

- The Manchester Spire

AND here is another over-looked , but well regarded, painting from the 1928 Los Angeles County Museum exhibit:


1- Oils

- Massachusetts Barn
Feb. 2025 NEW FIND & PIC

In the Sugar Bush

The search is over! This painting that exhibited at Woodward's homecoming when he sent seven paintings to the 7th An-nual exhibition at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, IL, a month after winning the Hallgarten First prize at the National Academy of Design's annual show. The artist attended the school from 1901 to 1904 receiving his high school diploma from there in 1902.

In 1977, Dr. Mark receiv-ed a letter from an art dealer giving him first shot at purchasing the painting, to which Doc had passed. Forty- seven years later it reappears and we have the pictures.

Of the seven paintings to hang at Bradley, we only know the names of four and now have pictures of three. The last holdout is the oil painting, Snow Pattern.


Feb. 2025 MORE MIX UPS

Winter Silence (new pics)

This painting has suffered one of the greatest injust-ices of any that we can think of in Woodward's entire oeuvre! Not only was it overlook by the artist but it was inexpli-cably forgotten entirely because it was mixed up with the painting below. Yet, this painting was featured in the Boston Herald's special Roto-gravure section taking half the page. Its caption was repeatedly quoted in numerous articles about RSW that followed for years after... But that is not the worst of the cri-mes, this painting won an award at a special exhib-ition a couple of years before its imposter was even made ⮞ Winter Pool... This painting is not really an imposter. It is very real, however, it was the painting Woodward remembered perhaps because it was purchas-ed by his patron-saint, Mrs. Ada Moore. What's more is that she had given it to her sister who passed around the time RSW was writing his painting diary. This piece got an entry and "Sil-ence" did not.The issue is Pool also got all of Sil-ence's credit as being the Rotogravure painting.


Feb. 2025 STILL MORE...

Evening Stream #3 Evening Stream #2 Evening Stream #1

Would you believe that two of these three Evening Stream paintings are related to Winter Silence and Pool? They are! Woodward claims that Evening Stream #2 and #3 are the same scene as "Winter Pool" only reversed (and again slighting Silence). We took that challenge to see if he is right and reserved the pictures we have to compare. Spoiler, they are closer than we thought but not exact. This shocked us to a certain extent because we always took the artist to paint what he sees, as he sees it.

There was also some confusion whether there was really three paintings or two. We have settled all of that and updated all of the pages telling their individual stories.

⮜ Winter Pool was also given the credit for the Evening Stream paint-ings but it was not even made until after Evening Stream #2, making Silence the inspiration..


Feb. 2025 ALSO UPDATED

Road Guardians

Caught in the fray of the Winter Pool controversy this page has also been updated. Here the issue is Woodward's claim for both paintings as being the first purchased by Mrs. Ada Moore. Our findings show that it is possible she bought both at the same time. Read page for more...



Mary Lyon House

This artwork page was one of the only gallery audit pages we actually got to this past month. It has been updated and new pictures have been added from a recent visit we made to the property. There is still more work to do on some of the other material. Keep posted.



The Woods at Night

This is a NEW artwork page and its name has been added to Wood-ward's oeuvre. It was discovered in an article giving it a favorable ment-ion and description. What stood out about the review was how the critic focused on the "dark Redgate" paintings more so than the other landscapes.


Feb. 2025 FIXED ORDER

Early Sugaring #2

It took almost six weeks but we have finally fix all of the pages effected by our software crash in Dec. '24. One of the cul-prits that caused the error was sorting out the three early sugaring paintings. This painting was to be #3 because it matched a photo of it hanging in a hotel lobby (more below)




Early Sugaring #3

... that is until, while work-ing on another project we find the ORIGINAL pic-ture by which we based our decision and learned that at some time, over the years, the picture mistakenly got squished making the painting look square when it was in fact rectangular!


It is not a hard thing to do, especially if you do not have the aspect ratio locked in your image editor. Still, when discov-ered and we began to re-name the files AGAIN we forgot that we still had the files opened in our html editor causing the crash. How it all got mixed up is explained in the artwork pages.


Nov. 2024 A NEW #ONE

Early Sugaring #1

While it is not a race per se, this newly discovered canvas and the inform-ation we learned has forced us to rearrange the three paintings all using this same name. In fact, it was our attempt to do this, along with the realization we mixed up something just before we were about to upload our updates that caused the loss of 70% of the work we had done, as well as delaying our upload.

Early Sugaring's #2 and #3 are still not fixed and so we have to leave them out of this update. Still, that is okay because the new #1 we knew existed from an old slide, but did not know its name deser-ves it own spotlight and crown as the orginal 1920 painting named by the artist himself, Early Sugaring.


The Casualties...

The most significant fall-out to the editing software crash are the two other paintings by the same name as this. We had hoped to present all three together for you this mon-th but new information for #2 and #3 were lost entirely. For expediency, we moved on for now.


FOLLOW THIS LINK TO ALL the previous updates from 2021 to 2014...