RSW's Diary Comments

Greylock in Autumn, c. 1934
It is crazy to consider but we have only one picture
of Greylock in an oil canvas painting and it is way
out in the distance! The only perspectives of the
mountain by Woodward are all from chalk drawings.

⮟ None.

Editor's Note:

It is disappointing that this highly praised painting does not have an entry in Woodward's painting diary. We are not sure what his method was in compiling the diary, which did not begin until the 1940s, but it certainly did not include using his newspaper clipping scrapbooks as a guide or reference.

There is a quote below from the Director of the Syracuse Museum of Fine Art's Art Chat column that attributes this painting as being the one bought by Abraham Lincoln's great grandson Lincoln Isham. However, we have conflicting information. While we cannot find the column below (which offers no date) we did find a 1934 clipping that states a pastel named Mount Greylock is the one purchased by Mr. Isham.

We will have to do more investigating. Right now, we have confirmed this painting is, (1) an oil painting, (2) it is a rare 30" x 40" painting (the only other in Woodward's oeuvre is Sea of Hills, 1939), and we have a note made by the artist indicating that the is a pastel / chalk version of this scene named December Greylock.

New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 4, 1932
by Royal Cortissoz

ARTCHAT by Anna W. Olmsted

Mr. Woodward's pastel Mt. Greylock in December shown in the Manchester exhibition summer before last, and praised by Royal Cortissoz, Dean of American art critics, as the outstanding picture of the exhibition, has been bought, we are interested to hear, by Lincoln Isham, great grandson of Abraham Lincoln.

⮝ We CANNOT find the source of this quote offered by the website founder Dr. Mark. We are working on sorting this matter out.

New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 4, 1932
By Royal Cortissoz

"A salient instance is provided by one of the landscapes which do more than paintings in any other category to give the show its character. This is the Mount Greylock in December by Robert Strong Woodward. I indicated just now that there were no singular 'spots" in the collection but I had forgotten for a moment Mr. Woodward's fine panorama of mountain and valley. It detaches itself beautifully from its surroundings by virtue of the broad impression it conveys of a majestic scene, and through the quality it has of a subject apprehended with genuine emotion. Incidentally, there is some fine drawing in the work. Mr. Woodward shows two other good pictures but the Mount Greylock is unquestionably his chief contribution and one of the arresting episodes of the occasion. What has impressed me in his art, and in that of more than one of his colleagues, is the fusion of the large, even grand nature of the scenery of this lovely part of the world with its more intimately beguiling traits. These mountains are imposing and have an air of unbroken stillness in which there is a strain of sadness, but, as the philosophical squire said to Dr. Johnson, 'Cheerfulness is always creeping in.'"

⮝ The quote above offered by Mr. Cortissoz, "Cheerfulness is always creeping in..." is a reference to James Boswell's, Life of Johnson, (Abridged version, pg. 166). However, it is misquoted. The actual quote is "...cheerfulness was always breaking in..."