Featured Artwork: Early Sugaring #2

Farmyard Sun, c. 1923, the Harrison Keach Farm

"Painted prior to 1928. Made from Harrison Keach's sugar house, and painting from which the Weldon Hotel picture was made. Bought by Emmett H. Naylor of Springfield, Mass. and Cummington and hung in his Cummington home until his death in 1939, when the painting went into the hands of his son, Winford Caldwell Naylor (grandmother at 20 Ridgewood Place, Springfield, Mass, (Caldwells). 'A previous canvas, owned by F. E. Williams was also called 'Early Sugaring' --so I have designated them as E.S. #1 and E.S. #2.'"

Editor's Note & Addendum:

There is something unclear about Woodward's diary entry for this painting. He makes no mention of why the canvas did not have a name when he sold it suggesting it was sold from his studio (all paintings that exhibited, did so with a name). Still, there are also a few examples of the artist letting people re-name their paintings. A tradition we carry on to this day, thus when he learned that the family had named the painting using a name he had already used he numbered them. This was also not unusual for the artist. He often re-used names himself, sometimes forgetting he did.

For years this was the only photo we had of this
painting hanging over the Weldon Hotel fireplace.
Unfortunately it only added to the confusion.

Woodward also makes no mention of the size differences between this Early Sugaring and the one made for the Weldon Hotel in Greenfield, something he did in other diary comments for other canvases. So for years, we took the photo to the left as our "proof" that Early Sugaring #2, which at the time would be 2 of 2, was the Weldon Hotel painting. Early Sugaring #1 is the first painting of the two known paintings and that would prove to be very wrong.

⮜ The picture to the left originated in Dr. Mark's early days of the website. In the image to the left, the painting is clearly squarish, thus matching the painting above. A perfectly square aspect ratio is 1.0. This painting (#2) has a 1.1 aspect ratio and is distinctly different, in that it is more square, from that of Early Sugaring #3 which the 24" x 36" third painting measurements have an aspect ratio of 1.4 or rectangular ratio. However, there is a problem with the photograph to the left and when discovered reduce all the careful work to reorganize these pages to rubble. More in the next section...

An old Weldon Hotel postcard.

⮝ Neither Larch or Brian knew where the picture above originated and we never asked because we were too busy building the new website. It was not until the new Early Sugaring painting came to us and we determined it is the original #1 that all heck broke loose. We had to "rename" all the files related to their respective pages in a way that nothing would be misplaced or lost. All of the old #ones had to be renamed #2s; #twos had to be renamed to #3s, because at that time the squarish Early Sugaring was the "Weldon" painting. However, at the same time Brian was scanning all of Woodward's exhibition catalogs which led to the discovery of 19 previously undocumented paintings from the Southern Vermont Artist Association programs. In that pile was a promotional booklet on the Weldon Hotel and in the booklet was the picture seen above, only in its correct aspect ratio!

The image of Early Sugaring (#3) hanging above
the Weldon Hotel fireplace in its correct rectangular
aspect ratio from the published promotional booklet.

⮜ Somehow and in some way, the picture of the hotel fireplace above got distorted and what we call squished distorting its aspect ratio. It happens in editing when the editor's aspect ratio feature is not locked. It is not hard to do but easy to notice when it happens unless you have failing eyesight like Dr. Mark and we never had a reason to question it.

Upon discovering that after all the work we did to re-order the Early Sugaring paintings, we still got it wrong and had to change them again. Only we did it forgetting that we STILL had the pages open in the editor along with about 25 other pages in various stages of completion, some saved, others not, crashing the editor when the files became corrupted as a result of the change. It would take 6 weeks to repair and restore the pages effected.