RSW's Diary Comments

None.

Editor's Note:

On Old Farm, 1921

You know how Woodward feels about a subject when he paints it more than once. We do not know the location of the farm. The 1921 version to the right is from a greater distance which is unusual for the artist because he prefers to be closer to the subject and that is the primary difference between the two scenes. The painting above appears to be from a closer vantage point leaving us to ask, "Did he go back to the farm a positioned himself closer or did he paint this version from the 1921 painting changing the perspective intentionally?"

Still, it is a powerful statement not all that dissimilar to his much loved Courage and Peace (1934) and it predecessor Near the Sky (1928) indicating to us that he was searching for something in the same vein.

Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 8, 1926

In Woodward's personal scrapbooks there are two different versions of this Boston Evening Transcript clipping. The one to the right is on common newspaper paper. The other is on different paper, much like the paper used for 'inserts' like "Parade Magazine." The Boston Herald had a featured insert which is named quite literally The Rotogravure; the name of a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. The image below has a very similar look and we wonder if it was incorrectly labeled. Typically, such special printing was reserved for the week's most popular newspaper, the Sunday additions, not a Wednesday issue in the middle of the week.

It is however the first article announcing Woodward's Lyman Exhibit which is his first- one man showing in Boston, and his first first exhibition since March, 1922 at the J.H. Miller Gallery in Springfield. The artist was preparing 50 paintings, 25 of which would be chosen personally by famed gallery owner, William Macbeth, to be shown in his gallery in New York City but the paintings were all lost the night before they were to be shipped on Dec. 22, 1922.

Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 8, 1926