RSW's Diary Comments

Spring Silhouette Sepia

"Painted in 1940 or 1941. Row of sugar maples by road just beyond my Buckland house at Harold Williams curve. Gray buckets on trees instead of red, under shoulder of Putts to left, figure gathering sap. Sold by Vose Galleries in Feb. 1949, to a Mrs. Homer Strong of Rochester, N. Y."

Comments on the back of a sepia print:

"A row of maples just beyond my place in Buckland, silhouetted darkly against the sun with unusual violety shadows, gray buckets and not red ones. Tan, ochre, gray rose-pale orange in hill and foreground, with no green."

The March, 1947, cover of the
Christian Science Monitor

• This painting sold at auction by Cottone Auctions and Appraisals of Gensea, NY, on November 6, 2010.

⮜ The cover of the Christian Science Monitor Magazine Section, March 1, 1947. Name on the painting was incorrectly listed as Sap Gathering.

We do not know where Dr. Mark got the picture of this cover. We do not have this issue in our collection. We did our best to clear the image up, but it is was an old picture. Also, the Monitor at the time had a growing reputation and would win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950.

Editor's Note:

This painting has gaps between when Woodward thinks he painted it and its exhibiting at galleries... He was notoriously bad at remembering the years he made something. Still, where was this canvas the nearly two years between 1943 and 1945? Did it tour the country? Vose Gallery represented Woodward in Boston and was very active in spending his work in museums like the High Museum in North Carolina, among others in Florida and Texas. Did this tour?

A screen capture from Google Earth of the area... Upper Street in Buckland has changed quite a bit since Woodward's time. Still, using Google Earth's street view we were able to get an approximate location. We could not get a more precise one, because the trees circled in the image block the view! But note the driveway that goes down into the valley. There are houses there now but we believe it is the same path seen in the painting's lower left hand corner. Also, because of how Google Earth works, this is the closest we could get to illustrate this. The next click puts you right in front of the trees that block the view. The next well past the spot.