Featured Artwork: Beside the Road in Dover

Woodward did not keep or make a record of his chalk drawings.

Editor's Note:

Old Yellow House; Dover, 1941

This pastel painting, the artist called chalk drawings, is related to the oil painting, Old Yellow House; Dover. Here, it is clear the pastel was made years before the other. We have also recently confirmed the pastel was bought by his best customer Mrs. Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen from the 1936 Southern Vermont Art Association show.

The number of paintings, particularly pastels, Mrs. Frelinghuysen purchased from the artist continues to grow and is now over 40 in total. She is the sister of Electra Havemeyer Webb, founder of the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. He parents collection, given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is among the finest anywhere.

The 1935 SVAA exhibit program cover

Remarkably, we have all of the Southern Vermont Artist Association (SVAA) exhibit programs from 1935 thru 1952. Missing are the years prior to the Hiram Woodward fire that was a complete loss in terms of books and papers. Yet, inexplicably, we are missing the 1936 SVAA program in which this pastel is named. Also, interesting to note is while this pastel did make the Deerfield Academy's American Studies Group (ASG) Catalog of the artist work, 19 other paintings that exhibited over the same period (1935 to 1952) did not, which is equally inexplicable. It is important to add that the ASG relied on information provided by the Southern Vermont Art Center and not the records in the estate which had not yet been discovered.

Woodward did participate in the 1934 SVAA exhibition with three paintings (1-oil, 2-chalks), however, that program remains unaccounted for as well. Of course, the artist was staying in a temporary home at the time. The SVAA event always occurred the week leading into Labor Day Weekend and the fire was in the previous July. Perhaps the program did not survive the move to Southwick.

After the fire, it was reported in various newspapers that no paintings were lost in the fire, all being saved by neighbors who rushed to the scene. (Woodward was not home at the time.) This was very intentional by the artist after his first fire, Redgate, ruined his reputation for the better part of a decade. He did all he could to prevent that from happing again.