Featured Artwork: The Old Barn

New Hay

Woodward did not keep records of the pastels he called "chalk drawings."

Editor's Note:

From the description given by art critic Earnest Bagg below in 1922 of this pastel painting we must include it with the seven other barn interior paintings. The barn is the "Little Red Barn" on the Keach farm.

The artist visited and returned to this subject time and again over two decades. Note that this is the second of two chalk drawings, both exhibiting a year after the other.

This subject is one of the more exhibited of any other and critical to Woodward's oeuvre. However, "The little Red Barn" inside and out is king. It exceeds all other subjects in terms of canvases exhibited, yet, it was only the featured subject in just one picture.

Springfield Union, May, 5, 1922

Springfield Union art critic, Ernest Newton Bagg

"....The inside of The Old Barn will strike an answering chord in the memory of many a New Englander, who has husked corn and found red ears, too, in such homely, hay-scented surroundings. The cracks admitting the sunshine, the clutter of stored harness and things saved merely because they 'might be' useful, the contented hens, nothing is forgotten to make the picture real ..."

The is another pastel named "Inside the Old Barn" and Mr. Bagg uses those exact words. However, the use of the quotation marks feels deliberate and not a mistake. Otherwise we would question it.

There are at least eight known "inside the barn" pieces of artwork and they are as follows:

The Little Red Barn

• In the Old Barn, pastel, 1921
• The Old Barn, pastel, 1922
• Old Rafters, oil, 1924
• New Hay, oil, 1925 ✽
• Dusty Rafters, oil, 1929 ✽
• In Keach's Barn, pastel, 1931
• Inside the Barn, oil, 1942
• Inside the Old Barn, ???, ????

Artwork with an image is noted with an asterisk *