RSW's Diary Comments

Sea of Hills, 1939, sepia print:
It took us some time to figure out if this image was the
same as the above painting because of how dark it is.
In the end, both the sky and size both matched and be-
cause the size is so unusual, we could any other option.

"Painted in 1939. The Beech Tree with ledges under a perfect gray sky made from outside of open shed in Heath pasture before we began to build the Pasture House! One of my most perfect paintings of the scene. Sent to the Manchester, Vt.. Exhibition in August, and sold to Mr. Bartlett Arkell of N. Y., Manchester, Vt. and Canajoharie, N. Y. and hung over the mantel space in his beautiful drawing room at Manchester, perfect placing for a perfect picture."

Editor's Note:

Woodward did not purchase the Heath Pasture property until 1938. We know the small studio cabin was finished in 1940 from Dr. Mark, not to mention the slew of paintings the artist made from Nov-ember of 1940 through May of 1941. However, Woodward is also notoriously inaccurate with the years a painting was made. We have no record of any painting by this name exhibiting at the annual Southern Vermont Artist Association (SVAA). Not only that, we checked every year from 1938 to 1942 before the exhibit was suspended for World War II.      ⮟ Continued Below ⮟

A composite of the 1938 SVAA brochure.
It is portions of the cover and its first page with
RSW's listing. It is for illustration purposes only.

⮜ The illustration to the left is a composite from the 1938 SVAA exhibit program we have in our records. As we stated above, we found no painting by this name in any of the programs we checked between 1938 and 1942. However, there is a painting titled, Peace on the Hills which was well reviewed by two newspapers. Unfortunately, neither newspaper gave enough of a description to offer us any help as to its subject matter.

At this point we cannot question Woodward's recall. Still, he rarely ever made an error as to where something exhibited or to who it was sold. We will have to move on until we have more information.

• Woodward was visiting and painting from the Burnt Hill pasture as early as 1919- '20. We know from his 1932 personal diary that his relationship with the owners was good enough for his to use a portion of the 160 acre property as a camp ground and although he does not specify where, we believe it is under the Beech Tree. The artist would purchase the property in 1938 with two paintings: Autumn Brilliance and Blue Drifts.

• Woodward often reused names for paintings but rarely where the paintings copies of each other. Each painting is unique. He often varied the perspective or size of the canvas. In instances where he painted the same subject, there was enough variations to make them unique in their own right.

It is important to remember that given the artist physical state, he did have an insecurity about having enough money to pay for his expenses. So if a subject was popular, he would take advantage of it. There are countless times in his 37 year career he would lose weeks to a month of work due to illness. Add the fires and other personal tragedies... Woodward took nothing for granted.