Featured Artwork: Down the Hill Road

RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted in Sept. 1941. Painted on steep hill from Leyden down into West Leyden just below Roberts farm in the fall of 1941. At the Hotel Gotham Branch, N. Y. Exhibition I had in March 1942. The Grand Central Art Galleries, themselves bought this painting (at a reduced price) for their summer and fall 'Founder's Show' so I may never know who eventually owns it, I'm sorry to say. This could be learned through the Grand Central Galleries, 15 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, possibly."

Note regarding this diary enter:

This diary enter is showed as RSW wrote it. We have since learned that the Grand Central Art Galleries had multiple "Founders" and thus RSW's use of the singular possessive apostrophe then 's" is incorrect. We use the correct plural possessive usage, Founders', in the the Additional Notes section. See below for more...

Hotel Gotham, Fifth Ave. and
55th Street, NYC. Today it is
The Peninsula Hotel

There is some confusing information regarding the Grand Central Art Galleries "Founders' Show." In our exhibition list is an exhibition held at the Hotel Gotham in NYC. It is listed as GCAG's Founders' Show but we no longer believe that is correct. RSW refers to it as the "Hotel Gotham Branch" which we now take to mean the GCAG had multiple outlets. It was NOT their main gallery which is on the sixth floor of Grand Central Station, where they would surely hold their big showcase event and most certainly not only feature RSW.

Woodward was holding a one-man show through his affliation with the GCAG at their location inside the Hotel Gotham. GCAG selected and bought Down the Hill Road explicitly for their Founders' Show which is a seperate event. Confusing the matter even more is that the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, mentions RSW and the GCAG's Fifth Avenue gallery specifically in her daily column, My Day, on March 11, 1942, but accurately states it is "inside the Hotel Gotham." Hotel Gotham today is now The Peninsula Hotel.

What is really wonderful about this is that Mrs. Roosevelt wanted to see RSW's exhibition and not specifically the GCAG's Founders' Show. A double victory for this painting which was selected out of 20 others exhibited in the hotel to also appear in the Founders' Show and was visted by the First Lady when the show was held over to accommodate her.

A Snippet from the First Lady's My Day Column
from the New York World Telegraph, March 11, 1942

One last thing regarding the GCAG showcase. We suspect that RSW incorrectly placed the apostrophe to singular possessive but the GCAG was a artist cooperative founded by members of The Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, included Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Therefore, Founders is clearly intended to be plural and thus plural possessive, Founders', would be grammatically the correct usage.

A clipping from, we believe, the
Springfield Republican reporting the exhibit
was extended and the First Lady viewed it.

Hill Road, Leyden, MA, today