Featured Artwork:Boiling Sap

There is no entry for this painting in the painting diary.

In The Sugar House, c. 1930 (oil)

In The Sugar House, Boiling, c. 1930 (pastel)

To the left is a picture of the painting In The Sugar House, it is a painting Woodward made of the Gray sugar house interior in Ashfield, MA. He intended to do the exterior but it was so cold and windy. To warm up, he went inside and made the only sugar house interior we knew of until finding this painting in the exhibition records.

Woodward claims in his painting diary entry for In The Sugar House , "...So far as I know the only painting ever made of this subject matter, boiling inside." Because he was compiling his painting diary in the 1940s at the suggestion of Dr. Mark and encouraged by his friend F. Earl Williams. He did it mostly from memory and it has a lot of errors regarding years and if there are similar canvases. Apparently he did not recall this painting by a similar name that exhibited three times over four years.

There is also a pastel painting (he called "chalk drawings") of the same scene. Our picture of the pastel is much better than the oil painting. The picture of the oil was taken from an old, faded 1983 picture Dr. Mark took before selling it.

One last remark: This painting hung twice in the Mass Mutual Life Insurance Company headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts, and from the paintings featured, this hung in great company, among the artist's best.