RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted prior to 1928. A canvas of the winter view of mountain, slope and group of trees (dominated by a tall winter cherry tree) across the road from my 2nd studio that burned. Bought around 1927-8 by Mr. E. B. Robinette of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, and now owned by his widow. Mr. Robinette was a very distinguished man, a close friend of Herbert Hoover and his head secretary during Mr. Hoover's First World War Relief Project"

"Mrs. E. B. Robinette, 12 East Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, PA, owns a 25 x 30 winter view from my north window at the old place (Hiram Woodward studio) which burned."

IMPORTANT EDITOR'S NOTE:

There needs to be a clarification regarding the name to this specific artwork. Woodward listed it as named simply "Winter" in his diary comments. It was also listed as simply "Winter" in the J.H. Miller Galleries, 1928 exhibition program and in Jeanette Matthews article below, however, the picture above is from Springfield Sunday Union and Republician is captioned as Winter-Scene from the studio window. This is NOT completely unprecedented by Woodward. He used a "subtitle" in another painting around the same time he named The Window: Still life and winter scene. For me, the most compelling arguement that this piece was subtitled is drawn from this question... Then how in the world did the newspaper KNOW the painting was from his studio window? The second most compelling arguement is that Woodward used similar names for the other versions of the same scene he painted. But simply for arguement's sake and our sanity here at the website, we will continue to refer to this painting using the subtitle to differentiate it from 9 other similarly named but different works of art. To read more regarding this issue, Woodward's dairy, and his seemingly intermitten use of painting names for various different versions please click on the link below...

Clipping of the article reviewing the
J.H. Miller Galleries Exhibition

Right: Springfield Union, April 1928, by Jeanette Matthews

This piece was exhibited at the 1928 J. H. Miller Co. Galleries Exhibition along with 37 other paintings and chalk drawings.

This painting appears in Woodward's diary simply titled "Winter." Woodward did not start compiling his painting diaries until the early 40s and so much of it was done from memory. What is not clear to us is if he used other references to help him. As great a resource the diary is, it is equally inconsistent and greatly lacking. This is an excellent example, there are three other versions of this wintry scene, two of which exhibited in 1931 and 1933 respectively and yet there is no mention of them in Woodward's diary. This was not uncommon for Woodward to not make mention of later versions of original paintings. We do not know why he chose to do this.

Below Left: Is a scan of Winter From The Studio Window from what is believed to be an invitation and Below Right: Is reportedly a picture of the painting taken before it was hung at an exhibition.

Painting in frame from an exhibit

Courteous of Myles Standish, clipping