None.
We are unsure how it occurred but for years this painting was mistakenly linked to the painting A Winter Day.
It was previously published that Winter Farms was the 30" x 40" 1918 painting Woodward made A Winter Day from.
This is incorrect. Records show that this painting exhibited twice in 1938, and once again at the special exhibition held at the home of
Mr. & Mrs. Roger Smith in 1944. Also, all the exhibition records list the painting as a 25" x 30".
We had to go all the way to
the earliest pages of the website made by Dr. Mark prior to 2005 to
learn that the painting linked to A Winter Day is actually named Snow
on the Mountain.
★★★ This, however, does not diminish this painting by any means. Considering where it
exhibited in 1938 - the Westfield Athenaeum and the SVAA - seemingly to disappear for 6 years and then reappear at the Smith house in
Gardner, MA, organized by Woodward's close friend F. Earl Williams indicates
the painting was well liked by Woodward, perhaps what we call an editorial piece. Our reasoning is as follows, of the 12 paintings that
hung in the home, 8 of them had already been purchased by some of Woodward's best customers, all of them are closely aligned with
what Woodward considered his "brand" as well as being well traveled and exhibited paintings, and finally, all of the pictures we have of the
show were taken by Williams himself.
Unfortunatrely, and this cannot be explained either, we only have picture of 10 of the 12 paintings! They were photographed in pairs of two
and we only have five images. This painting, Winter Farms, and Mountain Meadows are missing and for which
we have no pictures.
SEE BELOW FOR THE STORY OF THE SMITH EXHIBIT FROM THE BIG CHIMNEY
To the right: is a photograph of A Winter Song* and
The Big Chimney* hanging on the wall for a private exhibition in the home of Mr. & Mrs.
Roger Smith of Gardner, MA, December, 1944. The picture was taken by Woodward friend, educator, and amateur photographer
F. Earl Williams. Williams was once the principal of Gardner High School and so we believe he had something to do with
arranging this rare exhibition of Woodward's paintings in a private residence. The three missing photographs are New
England Impressions*, Winter Farms, and From the
North Window*. The paintings photographed are as follows in pairs: April Sun and
Frost on the Window, Portrait of a Shadow and
From a Mountain Farm, there is the chalk drawing The Road Home,
the oil A Winter Afternoon and other chalk Mountain Meadow
together and then Tranquility, and The Little Red Barn* as singles.
And what an exhibition! Worthy of any New York or Boston Gallery, it featured a number of Woodward's most exhibited editorial paintings going back as far as 1935 [noted by an
asterisk*] Two of the paintings hanging at the exhibit, A Winter Song and New England Impression previously hung at the 1939 Golden Gate
Exposition in San Francisco and the 1939 New York World's Fair respectively.