Featured Artwork: The Red Silo

Unnamed: Guilford Farm; Conway, c. 1942

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

Editor's Note:

This could be any red silo in Franklin or Berkshire counties. The picture to the right shows a collection of barns with a red silo from a farm in Conway, MA. There is also the Charlemont town farm seen in Farmer's Castle or the the red silo of the farm in Whitingham, VT near Lake Sadagwa seen in the painting Red Barns.

We have only 12 total examples of silos appearing in paintings as part of the whole. However, of the four paintings with silo in the name, three are pastels; the three focus on the silo itself and typically in some sort of distress. Also, the barn is ancillary. Then there is also the square silo December Farm and the square topped silo of, When Corn Is Ripe, showing the rare scene of the silo being used as laborers work below.

⮟ Below is a series of articles on the 1928 J.H. Miller Gallery event held as Woodward was still recovering from the fallout of his 1922 studio fire. It would be his largest solo exhibit to date... and lead him to other large gallery shows in 1929. His career will blow up after winning one of only four Golden Medal honors at the 1930, Boston Tercentennial Celebration Exhibition. ⮟

Springfield Union, April 25, 1928, by Jeanette Matthews

"...a vivid presentation of back-country New England that 'tells a story' to every spectator who has ever lived there, but is not the less appealing to the devotee of 'art for art's sake.' Rugged hills, in the distance and close tip, wood interiors and interiors of cozy, well-kept homes, old barns from without and from within, are some of the themes that are treated with fine appreciation and skill."

The Springfield Daily Republican,
Apr. 28, 1928

The Springfield Daily Republican, Apr. 25, 1928

⮜ ⮝ Here are two articles related to the 1928 J.H. Miller Gallery exhibition. It is a bit confusing because the Springfield Republican newspaper was going through a lot of changes in the 1920s. We have clippings were it is referred to as the 'Daily Republican' or the 'Union Republican' and there are also clippings listed as the 'Republican Tribune,' and perhaps at some time it was called the 'Herald Republican,' though we can't think of an example off the top of our head. As accurate as we try to be with these things, we do not always have the "folio" (the top part of the newspaper page with the name of the paper, the date, and day of the week) as part of the clipping in RSW's scrapbook.

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Springfield Sunday Union Republican, May 18, 1928

This is a featured profile on RSW written by Jeanette
Matthews a couple weeks later. This is where we learn of
Woodward's neuropathy problems among other things.

Again note the completely DIFFERENT name of the same paper in the article to the right ⮞

Another interesting piece to this story is that Woodward was having issues with neuropathy in his hands in 1928 and '29 which made it difficult to handle a paintbrush the way he needed to, so he invested more time into making pastels. From 1927 to 1929, he made 4 pastels to every oil. The Miller exhibit would be the first to feature a third of all the paintings to be pastel... and it was a hit from the reviews given below. This effort would culminate in the 1929 Pynchon Gallery Exhibit that featured his pastels in the main room and if you wanted to see their companion oil canvases, they were in another room! To the left is a rare black and white photo of a chalk. The photo indicates that it exhibited. It is the only known record we have. It is found in a scrapbook. The time period is from the other items in the book.

To get a better read of this article, you may want to see our full transcription in PDF form by CLICKING HERE. Document will open in a new tab.

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