RSW's Diary Comments

Page 3, SVAA 21st Annual Exhibit Program
August 26, thru September 4, 1950 é

• Woodward did not keep records of the pastels he called "chalk drawings."

Editor's Note:

Discovered as the result of our audit of the Southern Vermont Artists Association Inc. programs. The subject is Mount Equinox in Manchester, NH but we think it is from a distance farther than any example we have. The image to the right was made for the pastel named From Old New England illustrating that Woodward corrected the name in the exhibit program from "From Old England," as he usually did when the name was wrong.

Note the price for these pastels, $125. For whatever reason, the price of his pastels remained the same throughout his career. We suspect there are two reasons for this. The first is that the pastels pre-date his turn to become a professional landscape artist and it was his way of staying connected to his first love, drawing. The second reason is that Woodward took great pride in making his pastels look and feel similar to his oil canvases but be more affordable to regular folks, like teachers and librarians, small business owners and farmers.

Summer in Manchester, 1937
If you are a regular to the website, you are aware of
how difficult pastels are to photograph because they
are under glass for protection. So the expectation for
us whenever someone shares their paintings, 'we take
what we can get and are grateful for it.' Reflections
on the glass is a necessary evil to the pastels.

But when we get it right, like the pastel to the right,
these 'chalk drawings' as RSW called them are extra-
ordinarily beautiful and on par with the oil canvases.
In fact, they are outpacing the oils in appreciation
after adjusted for inflation, fetching 500% more $$$
than their original cost. One of the reasons, is that
pastels are much more respected today than then.

The title of this artwork is unique, even for Woodward. Is it a reference to the sky above the mountain? Is it a dramatic, stormy sky that holds a color tone that changed the mountain's coloring? All of the Equinox paintings show the mountain in its many expressions but none can be termed as "blue" in the truest sense. Still, there are those that come close, especially the 1937 pastel, Summer in Manchester to the left. There is also a chance the Tapestry of Spring fits the bill... but for the best example of what we think Woodward meant by the title is Mount Haystack Over Sadawga, indicating that the artist was farther from Mt. Equinox than any of the examples we have ⮟

Mount Haystack Over Sadawga, 1932