Featured Artwork: Keach's Barn in Spring

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Editor's Note:

The Farmyard, 1941, is this a Spring picture?

For this pastel painting (Woodward called chalk drawings), it is not hard to figure out the subject. It is in all likelihood the little red barn on the Keach farm. It is his most exhibited subject exceeding the Halifax (VT) House and the Beech Tree on Burnt Hill in Heath (MA). Even when you add the Heath Pasture sans the Beech Tree, the two subjects tie at 62 times, a piece. yet still, there are far less little red barn paintings (17- verses some 40 Beech Tree paintings).

So the real question becomes, "What is included with the barn?" That is more difficult to say because the barn itself was only the primary subject once (not counting this piece and we can't say for certain it is the primary subject).

The Greening Tree, 16 x 20, date unknown

The painting above, The Farmyard, features Mrs. Josey Keach feeding the Rhode Island red hens in the farmyard and the coloring is distinctly late summer (mid-September). The painting to the left is very much a Spring painting but the little red barn is hardly the feature. It is the Greening Apple tree. Could we be wrong about The Farmyard being a late summer painting? Could those yellows simply be golden light cast on the still very fresh, light green leaves of the trees? Perhaps, because when we check the dates of these two subject, the first version of the apple tree to the left wasn't first painted until 1931, however, the painting above was "re-painted" by Woodward from an earlier "old canvas." It is possible the artist made a chalk to go along with the oil but ultimately was unsatisfied with the chalk and exhibited that instead.

Still, there is a third option that is possible and we reveal that in the next section below.

Unnamed: Keach Farmyard, 1928

A couple months ago (2024) we found a torn photograph of a painting of the little red barn. On the back of it was written Farmyard, 1928. We did not take that as the paintings name. It is also obvious that again, the little red barn is NOT the subject in Wodoward's eyes. As we stated above, there is only one painting, The Little Red Barn, that the barn was featured. While the image is poor, you can see that there are no leaves on the trees but also, there is no snow on the ground, and so it is either a Even in November or an early spring painting. Without more information, it is literally a coin flip, yet still, the year is hard to ignore... it is very close to the year of this pastel painting.