RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted in winter 1936. One of the several paintings I have made from the Buckland Studio south west window, this one with it snowing outside and the pale green tool shop in it. Bought at the Southern Vermont Artists Exhibition at Manchester, Vt., together with The Geranium and the Mountain (which see) by Mr. and Mrs. P.B. H. Frelinghuysen of Morristown, New Jersey."

Comments on the back of a sepia print:

"Curtain red, geranium pink. Glass vase intense blue. Outside shed pale green, blue sash."

Editor's Note:

We have confirmed that this painting, along with The Geranium and the Mountain were bought from the car in August of 1940, four months after Dr. Mark got his driver's license. It is his recollection, Woodward is making reference to. He was the delivery man. Also, this makes the year these paintings were made unclear. If there is one thing Woodward consistently gets wrong in his painting diary, it is the year. However, we have confirmation that The Geranium and the Mountain was, in fact, painted in 1936. Yet, that does not mean he was right about Snowing Outside.

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 what is now more than 30 paintings (including chalks) 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.