Featured Artwork: Old Rafters

Diary comments mistakenly attributed to Dusty Rafters:

New Hay, 1925 was made from Old Rafters

"Prior to 1925. The inside of Herbert Keach's barn (now burnt). A 27 x 30 of the same subject was made before my Redgate fire"1922--- in which it was burnt. After the fire I went to the barn and made this 36 x 42. Exhibited it largely, till finally it was bought from my exhibition at Mrs. Lyman's house, Beacon St., Boston, by Mrs. W. Scott Fitz (daughter-in-law of Oliver Wendell Holmes). Upon her death it went to relatives, a Mr. and Mrs. James C. Hopkins of Dover, Mass. who now own it. I later made a 27 x 30 of this same subject titled New Hay."

Editor's Note:

Woodward confused this painting with that of the painting Dusty Rafters (1929) by crediting Dusty Rafters as the painting he used to make the 30" x 27" painting New Hay (1925). Also, because Woodward states clearly the painting used to make New Hay was a 42" x 36" that is now the confirmed size of this painting.

The program card for the 1926 Lyman Exhibit

Our reason for determining that Woodward erred in his diary comments is the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We have numerous exhibit programs clearly stating Dusty Rafters as the painting hung at the 1929 Myles Standish show, the 1931 Mount Holyoke event, Amherst in 1932, etc. There is no way all of those programs are wrong. Furthermore, we have the Exhibit program from the 1926 Lyman event and it clearly states the name of the painting at that exhibit as Old Rafters. Besides, how did a painting purchased from Lyman in 1926 exhibit 10 more times over the next decade?

Boston Globe, Dec. 23, 1926 by A.J. Philpott

Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 8, 1926

"There Is one of a barn interior, showing the hay piled high on one side above rafters, cobwebs and, as a background, deep shadow. It is a well-painted picture..."

Boston Post, Dec. 9, 1926

"The interior of an old New England barn, with its tons of hay, its old stalls and massive rafters, is an extraordinary thing"

Boston Post, Dec. 9, 1926

Springfield Republican, Dec. 27, 1926

"....Old Rafters is a fine barn interior, which shows that there is poetry hidden in the least expected places for the artist who has the imagination to discover it....."

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

• In the Old Barn, pastel, 1921
• 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 *

Editor's Note:

While we only have two pictures of the seven known paintings listed above. They are all very likely to be a similar subject and more likely to be the little red barn on the Keach farm. The Keach Farm was the artist's most studied New England farm..

The Little Red Barn

The barn is the Keach's "Little Red Barn" which happens to be one of the artist's favorite subjects- inside and out. The barn appears, one way or another, in nineteen various paintings as the backdrop of several other subjects, such as the farmyard out side of it, or the Greening apple tree just beyond it, or the pasture behind it. Then there is the painting to the left where it is the featured subject and the paintings Summer Barns and Twin Barns which it shares the limelight with its attached sibling.