"Painted in 1930-1931. A smaller canvas like Enduring New England painted from Marlboro church and the big canvas, and bought by Bradley Polytechnic Institute, Peoria, Illinois, and hung in the school."
This painting named The Marlboro Church is a 27' x 30 smaller reproduction of the much larger, 40" x 50"
Enduring New England. The scene is one of the most quintessential New England village paintings in the artist oeuvre. So much so,
it has become synonymous with Woodward's brand. Unfortunately, so has the New England church which was not a focus of his interest. In fact,
outside of the Marlboro church and the Mary Lyon Church just down the street from his
Southwick studio in Buckland, no other painting features a church outside the
Francis P. Garvan Commission.
Though Woodward embraced this scene as part of his brand it is important to distinguish that
the scene's importance is of the village center, the heart of the community. A church in the image is inconsequential being that it is near impossible
to find a New England town center without a church as its anchor with most churches also serving as the town's meeting house for public meetings.
Woodward lived in Peoria, IL, with his parents from August of 1902 through the Spring of 1904. His father, a real estate developer, was assigned to the now historic Highland neighborhood's development. He attended the newly formed Bradley Polytechnic Institute (now Bradley University) as a student reportedly preparing to study engineering in college later. He would receive his high school diploma from the school in 1904 but stayed on another two years after winning a scholarship for the school's college prep course.
His parents would leave their son behind to continue his education and head to Los Angeles, California where his company was moving its operations. Woodward would stay with a local family, the Bourlands, and as part of his scholarship work as a teaching assistant for the Literature Department. In this time, he would meet two life long friends, classmate and fellow artist Joseph Cowell,(we believe to be the young man to the far right in the picture above) and Smith College student, Ethal Dow, who just so happen to be the college roommate of the eldest Bourland daughter Julia. Julia's brother, Fred, would come with young Rob to California in June of 1906 to work for Woodward's father. He was present when Woodward had his terrible accident with a .32 caliber revolver after a weekend of camping in the San Gabriel mountains just three months later.
Woodward would return to the school triumphantly in April 1919. He would send 7 paintings to their annual art exhibition (the 7th year of
the show) two years after he started his career as professional landscape artist a month after winning first prize for the
Hallgarten Award given to the best artist under the age of 35 at the Nation Academy of Design's annual show. He was celebrated and remembered
fondly in the newspapers, especially in an article by a former classmate, Chas Lambert, titled
Echos of the Past. Another article reports the school purchased one of the seven paintings. Unfortunately, not only do we not know which painting (it is not
named). Worse yet, we only know the names of four of the paintings. No article list all seven painting names!
Woodward did make one more
version of this scene. However, technically it is what he referred to as a "composite painting" meaning he added features to the composition not actually
present. The painting, New England, 1940, incorporates trees from two other paintings to fill out the broad
perspective of the unusual 20" x 40" canvas. The size was something Woodward experimented with to fit over the mantles of fireplaces with not a lot of
height above it. Another example is End of the Road, 1944.