RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted in 1935. Made from golf links of Manchester. Painted from a chalk drawing of same place now owned by Mr. Lee."

Editor's Note:

Apr. 2026: not only did we miss this point on the first pass of our current artwork page audit, but we have missed it for almost two decades. This painting was "made" from a pastel and we have no page for this pastel. That is now rectified.

Artist, craftswoman, Margaret Whiting

★ For more on Whiting, visit Deerfield.org's
Arts & Crafts website. Start on this link...
Margaret C. Whiting (this will open in new tab)

Letter-to-the-editor: Springfield Republican, Nov. 25, 1936,
by Margaret C. Whiting, Deerfield, Nov. 16, 1936

"Even larger in quality though not in size, is the canvas called Mount Equinox in Shadow. Those who know Manchester will recognize that fine old Vermont village situated in its pleasant meadows, but its locality is of small consequence, for the great, tragic, dark bulk of the mountain looms above the sunny plane and becomes the essential expression of the scene. Above it are the shifting forms of a strange dramatic sky, lighted through a rift by the sudden brilliance of two shafts of intense light that glimmer against the mountain's verge without illuming its gloom. This is a superb rendering of an atmospheric moment. In fact, this quality of atmosphere is one of the ways in which Mr. Woodward manifests his growing mastery. With each year's work the sense of the relationship of all things to each other becomes more evident, and his intellectual subtleties of understanding are less apparent in that direct rightness of statement he is now able to express in a bolder attach and a freer brushwork. Always a colorist and an admirable draftsman, he is able to forget the process in the increasing ease of his certainty."

Margaret Whiting was a great admirer of Woodward's. This is not her ONLY letter-to-the-editor she has written praising Woodward making her one of his biggest champions. In her time, she was peerless in her skill of needlepoint... she was also an illustrator and author of books on botany and wildlife (primarily birds).