RSW's Diary Comments

Maple Guardians, 1952

• There is no entry for this painting in the painting diary.

Editor's Note:

We have confirmed the size of this painting in our editing software. Fortunately for us, Woodward's various canvas sizes do not repeat aspect ratios so if we try to resize the sepia print above to a canvas-sized picture, only one measurement works— 36" x 42" inches.

It is a large painting and reveals to us much more than the painting, Maple Guardians, to the right.  ⮞
However, this was intentional by the artist whatever his reasons. We have tried to overlay Maple Guardians on top of Shaded Road but only the tree to the far left lines up. The second maple tree in Maple Guardians is closer to the viewer and the scene stretches wider from there to across the road.

There is a third painting with a similar name to Maple Guardians, made in the mid-1920s and bought by his patron-saint Ada Small Moore, named, Road Guardians. We do not know if this painting is similar in subject because we do not have a picture.  ⮟ SEE MORE BELOW ⮟

The Road to Church

⮜ This painting shows the view looking down Charlemont Road just after the curve seen in the pictures above. Actually, if you noticed the hint of a house just behind the second maple tree in the above painting. That is the "Trow" place where Woodward sat to make the pastel to the left.

Two final things to say about this subject. This first is that Woodward used the term "guardian maples" in a diary comment for From Our Forefathers and we have scoured the internet to find any other reference to the term. We could not find a single reference, so we checked with Chat GPT, and it also could not find any use of the term in literature or otherwise. Therefore it is specific to Woodward and thus poetic in its use.

The second thing is that for Woodward to revisit a subject four times over four decades places that subject with his "Winter Evening Stream" paintings suggesting some emotional motive. As ChatGPT suggested in our conversation, the "guardians" indicate continuity and perhaps nourishment, "deeply rooted in place," which we understood to mean home.