RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted in 1936. Painted from the north window in the little reception room of my house of my yard with Gould's neighboring house, the Buckland street, etc. Exhibited generally and finally sold through the Grand Central Art Gallery to Mr. Paul J. Thling, 929 Edgemore, Kalamazoo, Mich."

Editor's Note:

We have questioned the spelling of the buyer's name. We believe it is an error made initially by Dr. Mark. A google search of the name in the the diary comment produced multiple results NONE of which are how it is spelled above. We found "Thling" which was an error made by optical recognition readers (OCRs) mistaking "I" for "T". There were a large number of results for "Ihling" in Kalamazo, because of a publishing company in the Michigan town. Also, we could find plenty of residents in Michigan with the name Ihling and none for Thling. We illustrate the issue with the screen captures seen below:

Google Screen capture illustrating the error OCR makes on recognizing the letter. There was another
example of the OCR mis-reading the letter "I" for "T" in a PDF from the same publisher - "IHLING."
See also how the "H" looks like an "N". These are common mistakes made by OCR.

A picture of the yard today (2016)

To the right: Is a picture of the yard today. As you can see, the barn has remained pretty much the same. The carriage house garage however was converted into offices for a "country doctor's" practice.

This is a special painting for Woodward though he does not say so in his diary comments. You need only look at where it exhibited to know that he considered this an editorial piece specific to his brand. Vose, the oldest and most prominent art dealer in Boston took Woodward on as a client beginning in 1936. Westfield always exhibited important paintings by Woodward and Wodoward was especially proud of being part of the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Yet is it the two exhibits outside New York or Boston that says it all. Buck Hill AA has strong ties to the "New Hope (PA) Artist Association" of the Bucks County school outside Philadelphia, as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and proximity to the NEw York City market and still exist to this day. But its appearance at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1938, Woodward's fourth straight year in Chicago, is the cherry on top.

There is ANOTHER painting by the same name! It also exhibits at the Westfield Athenaeum, only in 1934, ten months before Woodward would move into the Southwick Place in March of 1935. However, we do not believe it is a similar painting from the Hiram Woodward Place that burned after a lightning strike in July of 1934.

All references to the term "village" in Woodward's catalog are specific to town centers, like Upper Street in Buckland (10 paintings). Others paintings include, Heath (3 paintings), North Hadley ( 1 painting) and Leyden (1 painting). Without any other information, we couldn't hazard a guess as to what the subject of the original painting could be other than to say the most likely would be Heath (possibly Mrs. Moors home he visited as early as 1927) and the least likely would be Buckland.

Under the Summer Window, 1932

Woodward had a process of getting familiar with a new studio. Doing an analysis of his first "Window Pictures" made at his Hiram Studio revealed that he started in his window corner and worked his way counter-clockwise around the room before getting less Window Picture and more Still Life. We then compared the order of paintings made from Southwick and learned that his first Window Picture painting was of his scenic north artist window in March of 1935 christening the studio. It would be another year before he makes another and that one would be from his storage closet window of the carriage house of the North Window counter-clockwise from his first painting. He then paints the South windows, the desk corner and finally the little east window completing the circle. The very next painting he makes, just like at Hiram, is outside the studio.

Did you notice the two men and delivery truck in front of the neighbors house? We once had a viewer complain to us there were NO people in the People & Livestock Gallery. Lol! Woodward did not do portraits. He referred people to his friend and portrait artist Dorothy Tufts for those.