2026 - Buckland Hills

New England Song

  The theme for this year's annual Woodward calendar to benefit the Buckland Historical Society is the hills of Buckland. We cannot say he painted every hill in the small town, but 10 of the 12 named hills within its borders appear in this, the 18th issue of the calendar series.

  It is difficult to impress upon you the extent of Woodward's love for his home because it was shaped during his youth and the difficulties he endured that contributed to the fabric of the man he would become. Home simply meant something different to him. As he puts it in an interview with the Boston Evening Transcript's Margaret Getchell in 1920, he explains:

"I was born here in Shelburne Falls and although while I was a boy I had no home, for my father was traveling and we would go with him, settling for a few months in one city and then in another, still we always came to Shelburne in the summer. So, when I found that I must select one place to live in all the time, I came back to my boyhood home..."

  It may be perhaps the one place he felt the safest. It is hard to resist such a sentiment, especially after his accident that left him paralyzed and the illness that would force him to leave the School of Fine Arts in Boston after working and scrounging for four years in California, saving and raising money waiting for the school's new campus to be finished where he will be able to get around because it will be on ground level and not the 4th floor of the old museum.

  Asked about his years in the greater Los Angeles area, he sums up how important the Buckland Hills are to his spirit, both sentimentally and creatively:

"I could not paint in California all the year-round, while here in Shelburne there is fresh inspiration each month. I can't tell you how strongly I feel about the hills. I have lived here so much and have grown to love them so that it seems as though I had almost become a part of them. They have so much to say to me, that I want to express it to the world. They seem even more paintable than large mountains: there is something so intimate about them."

  There you have it; who would Woodward be without his Buckland Hills, the driving force behind his life's work?