RSW's Diary Comments

Woodward did not keep a record of his pastel paintings he called chalk drawings. It is unknown how many there are.

Editor's Note:

The glare on the glass of this pastel is so great we did not quite know what to do with it. We have had the picture for years but felt we could not put it on the website because the reflection from inside the room it hangs was so prevalent it was distracting. It is only recently when we developed a method to reduce the glare that appears in some paintings that we took our shot with this image. You can still see the glare but we feel as if you can get a sense of what the subject is without too much distraction.


There are two mountains named Haystack in Vermont and we believe this is not the one in Whitingham the artist painted and traveled to frequently near Halifax but we could be wrong.

Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen
from her 1905 Bryn Mawr College year-
book. Her sister, Electra, is known for
founding the Shelburne Museum, VT.

Adaline Havemeyer Frelinghuysen is far and away Woodward's best customer. A resident of Morristown, NJ, she and her husband Peter Hood Ballentine Frelinghuysen Sr. (a former law school classmate of not-yet-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and served as an usher at his wedding to Eleanor) summered in Manchester, VT. The earliest records we have of their relationship began with the start of the Southern Vermont Artist Association in 1927.


Over the years, we have learned that she and her husband bought as many as 40 paintings and we continue to discover more each year. Primarily because there were a number of private sales that were not recorded in Woodward's records, as well as, Adaline's appreciation for pastels and chalks which Woodward did not keep records. We believe her love of pastels comes from her mother (Louisine W. E. Havemeyer) and her close friendship with an artist famous for her pastels, Mary Cassatt. Cassatt was also friends with Edgar Degas one of the most famous pastel artists of all time whom we believe had a significant influence on Woodward.


If you are wondering, Adaline is the daughter of controversial sugar magnate and renowned art collector, Henry Osborne Havemeyer of the famed Havemeyer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her mother, a leader of the suffrage movement.