This website is a tribute to the life and artwork of Western Massachusetts artist Robert Strong Woodward (1885 -1957).
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   THE EXHIBIT HAS BEEN EXTENDED!   
WOODWARD  EXHIBIT:   Tues. thru Sun.  to June 29th
MEMORIAL  HALL  MUSEUM,   Deerfield,  MA

The show "Courage and Peace," will feature 21 original works by our acclaimed Western Mass landscape artist. It will include several recently discovered and never-before-exhibited canvases and drawings, along with a number of the artist's larger paintings. Do not miss this rare opportunity. This event is brought to you collectively by the Friends of Robert Strong Woodward organization, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association with the aid and cooperation of the Woodward estate and this website.


FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, HOURS, and MORE...
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Current Announcements


 The Spring Show
     Continues for
         3 More Weeks!


  The exhibit of 21 Woodward paintings hosted by the historic Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, MA, continues this month and is now available every Tuesday thru Sunday, 11:00am to 4:30pm until the 22nd 29th. The show features three sets of "twins" which is to say that three pairs of paintings will be of the same subject but in either different seasons, different mediums, one oil and its sibling chalk, or the same subjects but different sizes and slightly varying compositions.

In the Sugar Bush
In the Sugar Bush

  The exhibit will also include a few paintings that haven't exhibited in more than one hundred years but the real treat of the event will be that it includes four large format paintings typically too larger to transport easily. This is rare, the last exhibit to have this many large paintings was fifteen years ago...

The Woodward Exhibit, Courage and Peace at the Memorial Hall Museum, Deerfield, MA will open:
May 3, 2025 and run through June 22nd...

Remembering Doc...

Dr. Mark Purinton

Dr. Mark "Doc" Purinton
April 28, 1926 - March 4, 2020

  March was the fifth anni-versary of Dr. Mark's passing. We wanted nothing more than to honor him in some way. Better late than never, but I never imagined the choice I made to honor him would lead to SO MUCH work! If you have been following, we have updated a lot of what Doc termed, Winter Evening Stream paint-ings (WES for short) the past few months. This gave me the inspiration to update Doc's wonderful essay on the paintings in the Scrapbook.

  So much has changed since he wrote the essay in 2011.We had discovered new WES paintings from his early period. We have new exhib-ition information that pinpoints their origin and when they re-appeared throughout his career. Still, without all of this new material, Doc came awfully close to to how special these paintings were to the artist..

Brian Charles Miller,
Website Content Director

Monthly Featured Artwork from our 2025 Calendar:  The Road to Church

Road to Church
This painting by Robert Strong Woodward, The Road to Church is the June view in the 2025 Buckland Historical Society Woodward Calendar.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH ON WOODWARD:


"Aside from the warmth of the coloring, the fascinating arrangement of
pattern, it is the sureness of execution that proclaims this at once the
work of the accomplished artist."

In reference to My Christmas Shelf by the Springfield
Union's art critic, Jeanette Matthews, Sept. 24, 1927



Website's Key Features


Welcome to RobertStrongWoodward.com! The website is divided into two main features. First is the Gallery of Woodward's artwork sorted in themes and then alphabetically. There is also the Scrapbook which contains collections of stories, memorabilia and specific citations related to Woodward, his life and achievements. It is at once a tribute and historical record of Woodward and the life and times from which he drew his inspiration.



Woodward's Second Love...

Not only known for his landscape paintings, Woodward had a pas-sion for the restoration and preservation of aging buildings. In his life as a professional artist, he took an unused old diary shed and converted it to his first studio, Redgate. He then purchased an abandoned farm, the old Hiram Woodward Place, and restored it to a show piece of old New England. He then purchased an old mill (Boehmer's Mill) nearby and returned it to its former glory. After a tragic fire burned Hiram in 1934, he purchased another abandon farm, the Southwick Place featuring its early 19th century blacksmith shop into a model of New England tradition that appears today as it did when he lived there... His studios are a reflection of his values.





The Artwork Galleries

The galleries consist of nearly 800 known works of art created by Woodward. We have some form of an image for approximately 75% of them! The galleries are organized in two ways. The first is the Theme Gallery, sorted into 25 categories. The second is alphabetical, making up 8 separate galleries plus a gallery of artwork RSW didn't name or we do not have a name for at this time. Plus, visit our Complete Works List and surf the website from there!

In addition to the artwork, when available, we provide additional notes and background related to the artwork, as well as, links to related paintings or locations for a richer experience and connection to the area.




Our Recollections Scrapbook

The Recollections Scrapbook is a collect-ion of personal ac-counts from people who either knew Wood-ward personally or related to us an experi-ence they have had related to Woodward. A number of the stories told come from this website's originator, Mark Purinton (seen in picture to the left with Woodward), who started working for Woodward as a boy

.

Painting Stories Scrapbook

This is our "story behind the paintings" collection. It includes some of Wood-ward's favorite subjects, such as, his neighbor Harrison Keach's Farm, the Halifax (VT) House and the North Window of his Southwick studio. There is also Charlemont Bridge artwork before the bridge was destroyed in the hurricane of 1938 and Marlboro Church, part of a "church series" Woodward was commissioned for by industrialist Francis P. Garvin before his death.



Recent Website Updates

OUR CURRENT PROJECT MISSION:
We are looking to add greater depth of insight that fleshes out more context than we have ever had about Woodward's career as well as his personal values and principles. The stories just begin to tell themselves. And something like that results from processing the information one has available, turning it into empirical (measurable) data. Once it has been compiled, it then needs to be interpreted and analyzed and you start to see patterns and connections that are not always obvious despite being right under your nose for years.


More daunting will be the Scrapbook portion of the website. As of right now, the information under the Redgate Studio, the Hiram Woodward Place, and the Heath Pasture House are all woefully out-of-date. It is a top priority for us to update these pages, especially the Hiram Place, for which there is so much never-before-known information to add.


In addition to the studio pages, we have been assembling as many as 15 new Scrapbook pages and just as many in the queue for a much needed update. We suggest you go to our new Miss Mabel page to see what we mean. There are also important people in Woodward's life we have neglected to give their due. We now distinguishing some of these individuals as "patrons", "benefactors", and sponsors. One page in particular will reveal just how critical one women was to Woodward having any career at all.

UPDATE: June 01, 2025
If you read these updates regularly, you know that I go where the work on the website takes me. I also take my work with me wherever I go. This month I took it with me to the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, MA to occupy my time when there are no visitors to the exhibit. Larch and I docent weekends to answer all of the questions people may have regarding Woodward.

What always impresses me is just how many people come in to help us out. Many of them come to tell us stories passed down through their grandparents and parents about Woodward... or the location seen in a painting we do not know its whereabouts. We learn something new almost every day

Some people come in to tell us about their paintings, or put us in touch with someone they know with a paintings, etc. This past month, someone took a plane to come see the exhibit and bought us new pictures of their painting (to the right) and shared a lot of information we previously had not known. We get as much as we give, lol.

I was worried I would not have any updates this month again... But I did actually get things done, including finishing our audit of the "M" gallery. We have two new pictures for you, and I snuck in two updated Scrapbook pages, as well as new information settling the provenance of the painting Contentment before it was donated to the Springfield Museum.

BCM

June, 2025 NEW IMAGE

October in Buckland

To go along with this month's "Featured Artwork" above, "The Road to Church," this new image of the same subject in the wonderful colors of fall just came to us from its owner. we also learned more about another painting just outside the view of this canvas and so we also updated...


The Road to Church

... which shows a sugar house to the right of the scene that Woodward painted facing the opposite direction, thus giving us a look at where he positioned himself to make three canvases of the village center.


June, 2025 NEW IMAGE

My Christmas Shelf

It is still not a great picture because it is captured from an old newspaper clipping but it is better than nothing. Also, we have updated the information on the page to include other paintings it is related to and their differences.

One of the more surpris-ing facts discovered was that it was made much earlier than previously known. This earlier date makes the canvas Wood-ward's first, true, Still Life painting. It does have a window in it but the window is not the main feature of the canvas. RSW only made eleven still lifes in his career and he only made them bet-ween 1926 and 1931.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

The Blue Couch, essay

We updated this recol-lection written by Dr. Mark more than a decade ago.It is a first had ac-count of his experience and knowledge of how this painting got its name. A name Woodward did not really like very much but because he allowed owners to name their paintings if they did not already have name, he honored it. It even has its own painting diary entry.

Brian then adds his own commentary on the name, giving his theory as to why Woodward did not necessarily like it. Yet still, ultimately he finds a remote connection that gives the name some meaningful relevance to how Woodward felt about his Heath Pasture.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

Mr. Franklin's House, essay

This is a wonderful story about the work that went into finding out the loca-tion of this house Wood-ward painted at least three times in and around 1930. It was not easy because, in truth, the house was not owned by Mr. Franklin... he rented it. Woodward obviously did not know that or if he did, because Mr. Franklin was living in it - it was his home.

The page has been refor-matted and all of the pictures have been up-dated. We have even added some new ones!

Many thanks to Randy Frazier with the help of Norma Thibodeau to get to the bottom of this mystery many years ago.


Jun. 2025 UPDATED INFO

Bernard Hyman, profile

In one of our more em-barrassing gaffs, this page has been updated with the correct and substantiated information.

Years ago we received an email from someone be-lieving to know the missing gap in proven-ance for this painting. While this person did not lie to us or intend to mis-lead us, nor was the information wrong. The information was merely an incredible coincidence of one thing having no connection to the other.

We now have the correct information as to how the Dwyer sisters came to jointly own the painting, Contentment, and it is un-impeachable


Apr. 2025 UPDATED ESSAY

Winter Evening Stream

A project three months in the making and a month too later. The shear amount of new inform-ation alone surprised even us. In 2011, Dr. Mark published an essay on the subject of Wood-ward's Winter Evening Stream paintings (WES for short). Fourteen years later we had new images of many of the paintings, as well as a better grasp on the years they were made.

The new page is long. It is structure in three sec-tions starting with Doc's original copy, followed by its addendum written by Brian. The last part is Brian's commentary with supporting data that breaks down what makes the WES paintings so unique.


Apr. 2025 NEW PICS/INFO

Snowing on the Hill

This page has been updated and pictures have been re-edited using new methods that offers a much better look at this award winning paintings.


Miss Johnson's

This page has been updated as part of our artwork page audit. The bonus is that examining the picture of this painting we noticed how perfecting it appeared to fit the Golden Spiral. We laid our golden spiral over the image and it lined up in such a way it is worth sharing.


April, 2025 NEWLY ADDED

Silver Clouds Over Equinox

This artwork page has been added to the list of complete works. It was one of the painting names we discovered in our audit of the So. Vermont Artist Assoc. brochures. Only, this painting was also very well reviewed by critic Royal Cortizzos making it stand out from the others.


Silver Sky Over Equinox

This artwork page was updated as well and is believed to be related to the pastel above. Our image is terrible but it at least shows what the pastel above resembles.


Apr. 2025 MORE UPDATES

Most of our efforts this month was on the WES essay honoring Dr. Mark. However, we still managed to update the following artwork pages.



May Woods

Midwinter

Mild Winter

A Mild Winter Day

Mount Equinox in April
April, 2025 RE-VISIT

Not that we haven't given you more than enough to keep you busy for at least the rest of winter... we do encourage you to visit, if you haven't already, some of Doc's Scrapbook essay we have updated and added new information...


A Tribute to Local Schoolteacher: Miss Mabel Raguse

⮞ Famed Collector: Francis Patrick Garvan

⮞ Brian's essay on the mystery of: December Farm Painting

March, 2025 PAST DUE!

Out of The Mist

We have updated this page with "new" pictures. New is in quotes because the pictures are not recent. In fact, they are nearly a decade old. They got lost in the mix somehow, and put aside only to get lost track of.

Better late than never, and the pics where taken with the same camera we still use today. The timing of it is also exciting because not only do we have great pictures of this beautiful painting, but it comes just after locating a contemporary friend from the same year, In the Sugar Bush.


March, 2025 WHAT THE...

Where Glaciers Passed

Speaking of over looking something... neither Larch or Brian noticed for more than 15 years that this painting had been cut down by Woodward, and significantly so, by more than 40%. We illustrate to difference and how we made the discovery, along with some other new information.


May Heights

This fell right in our lap as part of our artwork page audit. This painting, which we have no image of may be either (1) its own separate painting related to another known painting by its similar name... OR, (2) it does NOT exist at all. It might be a mistake similar to what we discuss with Old New England (Oil). A reporter or type-setter at the newspaper may have heard the name wrong... Nothing definitive so again we encourage you to read the story.


March, 2025 UPDATED

Mary Lyon Church, Crayon

We have two known crayon drawing made by Woodward and when we say crayon, we mean crayon, not pastel or chalk. We do not know what prompted him to make the drawings but they are exceptionally well done. The crayons are not signed which makes sense. They were not done for professional reasons, yet, perhaps it was simply a matter of experimentation. We do not know.


Mary Lyon's Church, Oil

As it is with the summary above, this page was updated as part of our audit of each and every artwork page. Some updates yield, new information, or disproves information previously posted.


Mary Lyon's Hill

Updated as part of our audit of each and every artwork page.


March, 2025 ALL SETTLED

Old New England, Oil

This is one of the best examples of correcting a long made error and this painting has finally found its true name. The error was made from a news-paper clipping where this canvas was the featured artwork. However, it was captioned "Landscape" and without more inform-ation, Dr. Mark felt com-pelled to stick with that until we learn otherwise, which we have... Read the story!



Old New England, Chalk

This new pastel came to us recently by way of a gallery that was selling it. You've seen the pictures because we announced the sale last month. It has since been sold and no longer available. How-ever, this artwork holds a particularly special place at a special time and its story says a lot about how RSW felt about it.


March 2025 NEW PAGES

Below are 4 more of 19 newly discovered painting names found in an audit of Woodward's personal collection of Southern Vermont Artists Associ-ation exhibit programs not originally included in the Deerfield Academy's 1970 catalog of Wood-ward's work.


3- Oils

- Peru in Summer
- The Green Bottle
- Mount Stratton from
   Peru, Oil


1- Pastel

- The Manchester Spire

AND here is another over-looked , but well regarded, painting from the 1928 Los Angeles County Museum exhibit:


1- Oils

- Massachusetts Barn
Feb. 2025 NEW FIND & PIC

In the Sugar Bush

The search is over! This painting that exhibited at Woodward's homecoming when he sent seven paintings to the 7th An-nual exhibition at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria, IL, a month after winning the Hallgarten First prize at the National Academy of Design's annual show. The artist attended the school from 1901 to 1904 receiving his high school diploma from there in 1902.

In 1977, Dr. Mark receiv-ed a letter from an art dealer giving him first shot at purchasing the painting, to which Doc had passed. Forty- seven years later it reappears and we have the pictures.

Of the seven paintings to hang at Bradley, we only know the names of four and now have pictures of three. The last holdout is the oil painting, Snow Pattern.


Feb. 2025 MORE MIX UPS

Winter Silence (new pics)

This painting has suffered one of the greatest injust-ices of any that we can think of in Woodward's entire oeuvre! Not only was it overlook by the artist but it was inexpli-cably forgotten entirely because it was mixed up with the painting below. Yet, this painting was featured in the Boston Herald's special Roto-gravure section taking half the page. Its caption was repeatedly quoted in numerous articles about RSW that followed for years after... But that is not the worst of the cri-mes, this painting won an award at a special exhib-ition a couple of years before its imposter was even made ⮞ Winter Pool... This painting is not really an imposter. It is very real, however, it was the painting Woodward remembered perhaps because it was purchas-ed by his patron-saint, Mrs. Ada Moore. What's more is that she had given it to her sister who passed around the time RSW was writing his painting diary. This piece got an entry and "Sil-ence" did not.The issue is Pool also got all of Sil-ence's credit as being the Rotogravure painting.


Feb. 2025 STILL MORE...

Evening Stream #3 Evening Stream #2 Evening Stream #1

Would you believe that two of these three Evening Stream paintings are related to Winter Silence and Pool? They are! Woodward claims that Evening Stream #2 and #3 are the same scene as "Winter Pool" only reversed (and again slighting Silence). We took that challenge to see if he is right and reserved the pictures we have to compare. Spoiler, they are closer than we thought but not exact. This shocked us to a certain extent because we always took the artist to paint what he sees, as he sees it.

There was also some confusion whether there was really three paintings or two. We have settled all of that and updated all of the pages telling their individual stories.

⮜ Winter Pool was also given the credit for the Evening Stream paint-ings but it was not even made until after Evening Stream #2, making Silence the inspiration..


Feb. 2025 ALSO UPDATED

Road Guardians

Caught in the fray of the Winter Pool controversy this page has also been updated. Here the issue is Woodward's claim for both paintings as being the first purchased by Mrs. Ada Moore. Our findings show that it is possible she bought both at the same time. Read page for more...



Mary Lyon House

This artwork page was one of the only gallery audit pages we actually got to this past month. It has been updated and new pictures have been added from a recent visit we made to the property. There is still more work to do on some of the other material. Keep posted.



The Woods at Night

This is a NEW artwork page and its name has been added to Wood-ward's oeuvre. It was discovered in an article giving it a favorable ment-ion and description. What stood out about the review was how the critic focused on the "dark Redgate" paintings more so than the other landscapes.


Feb. 2025 FIXED ORDER

Early Sugaring #2

It took almost six weeks but we have finally fix all of the pages effected by our software crash in Dec. '24. One of the cul-prits that caused the error was sorting out the three early sugaring paintings. This painting was to be #3 because it matched a photo of it hanging in a hotel lobby (more below)




Early Sugaring #3

... that is until, while work-ing on another project we find the ORIGINAL pic-ture by which we based our decision and learned that at some time, over the years, the picture mistakenly got squished making the painting look square when it was in fact rectangular!


It is not a hard thing to do, especially if you do not have the aspect ratio locked in your image editor. Still, when discov-ered and we began to re-name the files AGAIN we forgot that we still had the files opened in our html editor causing the crash. How it all got mixed up is explained in the artwork pages.


Nov. 2024 A NEW #ONE

Early Sugaring #1

While it is not a race per se, this newly discovered canvas and the inform-ation we learned has forced us to rearrange the three paintings all using this same name. In fact, it was our attempt to do this, along with the realization we mixed up something just before we were about to upload our updates that caused the loss of 70% of the work we had done, as well as delaying our upload.

Early Sugaring's #2 and #3 are still not fixed and so we have to leave them out of this update. Still, that is okay because the new #1 we knew existed from an old slide, but did not know its name deser-ves it own spotlight and crown as the orginal 1920 painting named by the artist himself, Early Sugaring.


The Casualties...

The most significant fall-out to the editing software crash are the two other paintings by the same name as this. We had hoped to present all three together for you this mon-th but new information for #2 and #3 were lost entirely. For expediency, we moved on for now.


Dec. 2024 NEW PASTELS

Beside the Road in Dover

This pastel recently came to us from its current owner and it is related to the oil painting, The Old Yellow House in Dover, however, it is not exact. There is a family sitting on the porch,the per-spective is wider and a little further back than the oil. Unique in its own right, this painting captures the age of the home very well.


The Winter River

Also related to an oil canvas is this pastel looking across the Deer-field River toward Buck-land's Purinton Hill, simi-lar to the subject found in Across the Winter River.

Woodward is not simply copying subjects to produce more paintings. There is a very good reason, he prided himself on making more afford-able art look as close to the high-end work of the oil canvases.


December 2024 NEW PICS

Mild Winter

Just when you think it can't get better.. it does. We already had a good picture of this painting but had the opportunity to see it in person and we took it! Along with new pictures. We would be no where without the gracious kindness of their owners and our appreciation is immeasurable.


Grey Heights

We made numerous visits at the invitation of the painting owners and we could not feel more blessed. We cannot express how much more amazing the paintings are in person. We never really do them justice on the website, no matter how hard we try!

For this piece was had an old, low resolution image that has now been upgraded to Hi-Res beauty.


Dec. 2024 CORRECTED

Woodland Mystery

The two paintings cited in this this table box are related. One has a painting diary entry and the other does not, despite being painting within the same year, of the same subject... One painting exhibited where the other did not, yet still, both have distinctly different sepia prints...


Evening Woodland

... in the diary remarks the artist attributes the year to the wrong paint-ing mixing it up with the other without even ac-knowledging there are two canvases while also adding it would be his second to last painting before retiring.

Very few endings are ever as graceful as we would like and Wood-ward's was no exception and so we find it comfort-ing to know his last two paintings were his favor-ite subjects: one old school and the other new.


December 2024 NEW PAGES

Below are 4 more of 19 newly discovered painting names found in an audit of Woodward's personal collection of Southern Vermont Artists Associ-ation exhibit programs not originally included in the Deerfield Academy's 1970 catalog of Wood-ward's work.


3- Oils

- Peace on the Hills
- Shoulders of Equinox
- In an April Pasture

1- Pastel

- Hill Road

AND here are two over-looked , but well review-ed, paintings from the 1926 Lyman-Longfellow House exhibit:


2- Oils

- November Grey
- Sap's Boiling
October 2024 NEW PIC

Proud Elm

You are going to have to scroll to see this new picture of this much loved painting. Its extreme aspect ratio makes it one of the most rectangular paintings in the artist's oeuvre but it is also an upright painting meaning it is tall- very tall. Woodward obviously liked Elm trees. He painted them several times including it in the painting names, Wide Spreading Elm, Dooryard Elm, The Hitchcock Elm and this piece, which was painted in historic old Deerfield area, as was the Hitchcock Elm.

How grateful are we to have these elms captured for history after the Dutch Elm disease ravaged the world of these majestic and glorious trees, except for a small town in Maine, Castine, where 300 American Elms survive to this day. It sounds like it is worth a visit.


Oct. 2024 NEW PASTEL

Under the November Sky

This newly discovered pastel painting was the catalyst to our audit of all of the exhibit programs we have on record. First was the surprise that Mrs. Frelinghuysen bought a Beech Tree painting when, with just a few exceptions, she mostly purchased Vermont specific subjects. So we went looking in the programs to see if this one was missed, we found 20 missing names! Moreover, this pastel was not found in any of the SVAA programs, however, we do have one missing year out of 17 and that is 1936.


Oct. 2024 NEW PASTEL

From the Pasture Top in June

Similar to Under the November Sky, this pastel was purchased by Mrs. Frelinghuysen, by far Woodward's best customer. Second place is a distant, distant second by as much as 4 times. Most of her purchases were pastels we believe, because she held the medium in high esteem. Her mother, Louisine Havemeyer, who was close friends with renown American artist, Mary Cassatt, who along with her boyfriend Edgar Dugas, did great things with pastel and were well known for them.


October 2024 NEW IMAGE

Silver Clouds and Haystack

We have had a picture of this pastel painting for a couple of years now but the glare from the glass over the painting was so distracting we deemed it unusable. However, re-cently we have develop-ed a technique to reduce the glare in pictures of paintings. It is tedious and takes numerous cyc-les of processing but we find that in the end it is worth it... You can still make out some of the features of the room it hangs, but now you can also see the painting itself without straining to ignore the glare.


October 2024 NEW PAGES

Below are 5 of 19 newly discovered painting names found in an audit of Woodward's personal collection of Southern Vermont Artists Associ-ation exhibit programs not originally included in the Deerfield Academy's 1970 catalog of Wood-ward's work.


3- Oils

- Long Years Have Passed
- Grace of Age
- Bottles and Snow

2- Pastels

- Mount Equinox from
  Sunderland

- Mount Stratton from Peru
Oct. 2024 JOURNEYING

Maple Sugaring   & Steaming Sugar House

We will call this "Brian and Larch's Excellent Adventure!" One day in the Buckland area with time to kill, the two set out to locate and see if they could find the rem-nant of the old Keach sugar house that appear-ed to hang precariously on a steep slope on Koo-chuag (Snow) Mountain.

A hundred years after the artist painted these paint-ings we found, what we believe is its exact loca-tion and took pictures with some new inform-ation.


October 2024 CORRECTED

The Sugar House

For years, it was assumed that this was an interior painting much like In The Sugar House, however, it is no longer believed to be so. We now believe this painting is the EXTERIOR of the Gray Sugar House RSW was making when it got too cold and windy to paint outside and he was carried inside to warm up. That, of course, led to him making the pastel that would become the oil mentioned above.


October 2024 UPDATED

In The Sugar House

Brian and Larch are getting pretty good at being able to get the most out of an old photograph and this is a good example. When Brian learned the pic we have is from an old photo taken in the early 1980s, he realized the problem with the picture was that it was over saturated with yellow from the room's lighting. He adjusted the saturation reducing the yellow to get a better representation and showed it to Larch. Larch took it further (to show Brian up, he believes) and worked on it some more to bring out the true reds, blues and purples. While it is still a 1980s picture and the best we have. It now looks much more like the original chalk drawing.


Sept. 2024 NEW PAGE

The Church at Bennington, Vermont

This page has been so long over due. We have known for some time now that the Bennington Church oil painting had a sibling chalk drawing but no page was ever made for it. We offer a theory as to why the chalk was made but fail to point out that the pastels often give RSW an accurate rendering of the colors he will replicate in oil. It is a useful tool.


Sept. 2024 NEW FINDS

Beside the Road in Dover

The first of three new pastel painting discoveries. From its name we have a good idea what painting it is related to and where it exhibited - the Southern Vermont Artist Association (SVAA).

Near the Seventh

This discovery surprised us a bit. It was seen in the 1942 exhibit program for the SVAA, and while we know there is a painting that once hung in the Equinox Golf Club's dinning room of the ninth hole. We did not, however, know about this chalk drawing.

Under the November Sky

This chalk drawing is said to be of the Beech Tree in Heath. We are hoping for some pictures soon. We can't wait to see this piece painted in his favorite month.


Sept. 2024 NEW INFO

October (1944)

In Woodward's diary comments, he claims this painting never left the studio until it was sold. However, this is contrary to the facts and it seems inexplicable as to why this would be. This painting hung, alone on its own wall,in a place of honor in a special exhibit in Springfield in Novem-ber 1944 that also featur-ed four other of the country's best painters. The issue may stem from the article we discover-ed... they botched Woodward's name! His middle name no less.

Also, we are finding more and more errors and omissions regarding the 1940s in the artist's painting diary that we have a theory about and will lead to an essay.


Sept. 2024 NEW INFO

Snowing on the Hill

Add this painting to award winners! Again from an article we trans-cribed this week, we learn that this painting, which once hung in the London Embassy, is also an Award Winner. It won an Honorable Mention award at the 1941 annual Jordan Marsh Co. event. Again, not mentioned in his painting diary entry and inexplicably, the program for that year is missing from our collec-tion. We have added it to the Awards Gallery and updated the page to add the honor.

Again, this is another example of Woodward's painting diary falling just short on important information.


Sept. 2024 UPDATED

Marlboro Meeting House Library, Bookplate

This page was updated because it was next in line in our audit project. Coinciding with the audit we had located an invit-ation to the re-dedication of East Poultney Church. Woodward was a popular guy with Vermont church-es in 1937. He has been commissioned by Francis P. Garvan to painting historic, architecturally and historical, churches. This was prompted by RSW's painting, Enduring New England, that has the original Marlboro Me-eting House building. It burned down the next year and its architect for the new meeting house used RSW's painting to help in his design and this bookplate honors his contribution.


Sept. 2024 NEW PIC

Unnamed: Good Neighbors

We cannot even begin to explain how this new image of an unnamed painting got lost in the mix of things, but we have had it for at least a year. A new page was made for it and it simply fell through the cracks.

It is a unique painting made from a perspective not seen in any other canvas. It gives a terrific look of the landscape between Southwick and its neighbor to the north. RSW made numerous paintings of a similar scene but did so from his studio's artists north win-dow. In this piece, shows the gully separating the properties with Holsteins grazing on its slopes.


Sept. 2024 UPDATED

Majestic New Hampshire Magic

This page got updated as part of our ongoing audit and update of the website. Not all updates make this list. This canvas did for a couple of reasons, the first being, it is such a unique brush-style for the artist to use. It is actually very similar to the celebrated painting also in this monthly update, Snowing on the Hill, and minimalist for the artist known for his detail. It is very refreshing. We ALSO managed to pinpoint the location from where RSW positioned himself to make it.


07-27-2024 REVELATIONS

Keach's Stove &
Mrs. Keach's Front Porch

Talk about two paintings having very different fortunes. Woodward con-sidered both among his masterpieces, yet one ended up never being sold and remaining in his personal collection. The other is one of his most traveled, recognized, and one of the most frequent-ly mentioned in news-papers at the shows it appears. It ends up in the collection of a famous person and eventually a museum. But the two paintings are #1 and #2 of the most exhibited Keach Farm-themed paintings, as well as, focused on the family home and NOT the farm.

The update of these two pages is a by-product of our work on the Keach barn interior paintings as we are in the midst of doing a complete ac-counting of the Keach-themed paintings.


07-26-2024 INSIDE THE BARN UPDATES

In the Old Barn, 1921

The first of six, maybe seven painting's of the Keach barn interior. It is a pastel painting the artist called chalk drawings.


Old Rafters, 1925

The second Keach barn interior painting is the largest and went into the private collection of a famous person in Boston. It is also the painting by which the next, smaller version, was made.


New Hay, 1926,'27

A smaller version of Old Rafters, this painting never exhibited and was kept by the artist in his personal collection. The reasons are unknown to us.


07-23-2024 BIG DISCOVERY

Dusty Rafters, 1929

We believe this was made specifically for the Littlecote exhibit which was his first in Eastern New York and the new Myles Standish Hotel art gallery in Boston that followed. Another first, the Standish event would be the first of many shows at the hotel.

Of note, however, is that we needed to strike the entirety of Woodward's diary comments for this painting which he mistook for Old Rafters. We have found errors in the diary as we go through this process but for him to forget a painting equally as important to the one he is mistaking it for is a big surprise, even to us.


07-22-2024 MORE INSIDE THE BARN

In Keach's Barn, 1931

This pastel painting appears to have been made specifically for the show it appears, the 1931 Tryon Gallery Exhibit at Smith College. Much like the 1929 Pychon event where the artist featured chalk drawings with their oil counterparts. This piece hung with Dusty Rafters at Smith.

Inside the Barn, 1942

Nine years later this painting appears seem-ingly out of nowhere to hang at the Grand Cen-tral Art Gallery in New York City and Woodward makes no record of it in his diary.


Inside the Old Barn, ?

This name/painting is as of now still unconfirmed.


07-22-2024 PICS ADDED

June Brook

Part of our brief J Gallery audit, it was the only artwork page in need of updating as the other four had been done prior to getting to the gallery. Nonetheless, we offer you a treat by adding pictures to the page showing what we believe to be the "falls" he painted in this interior woods painting.


07-19-2024 UPDATED

Into the Winter Woods

Not only did we have this page listed in the wrong order, alphabetically, on the gallery page (we corrected it) but we believe there is enough evidence to conclude that this painting is not the same as the previously unnamed but now given a name by its owner Into the Woods.


07-17-2024 UPDATED

Keach's Barn in Spring

There are two seasons for "haying time" and neither are in the Spring, yet the Spring was a pop-ular season for Wood-ward to paint at the Keach farm, all of which are exteriors. While we do not have a picture of this painting we offer you several options and even make one inconclusive suggestion of a strong possibility with what we feel is MORE than a coincidence.


07-15-2024 UPDATED

The Last of Winter & New England in November

These two paintings were included in our accounting of the Keach farm paintings. It turns out that both paintings were also popular with the reviewers. Last of Winter was called "arresting" by critic Royal Cortizzos, and critic Henry McBride admired all of the "enticing facts" of New England in November, so much so, he chose not to be hyper-critical of it being too much.

We have updated both pages to include the articles associated with these painting, as well as adding more pictures.


07-14-2024 UPDATED PICS

Country Piazza

While examining the most exhibited paintings, this piece which is in the same collection as Keach's Stove, did not exhibit as much as Keach's Stove but it is where it hung that says all you need to know about how important it is, needed a refresher on it picture that had a distracting glare.

We used some of our new editing skills on the old picture and managed to reduce the glare and improve the image.


07-12-2024 UPDATED PICS

The Desk Corner

another painting in the same collection as Country Piazza and Keach's Stove with a terrible glare was corrected using our new editing methods. As of this moment, however, the image of Keach's Stove is the best it is going to get for now. We are working on getting a better image.


07-11-2024 UPDATED PICS

At Sugaring Time

Back in January all of the attention was on the recently restored When Drifts Melt Fast. This painting is its sibling but facing down the steep hill on the road. It was also plagued with a terrible glare and we were able to reduce it without altering the color and look of the painting's true tones. We also updated the page.


06-05-2024 NEW GALLERY!

"Late Summer"

This new gallery's idea was inspired, in part, by our "In November" gal-lery. The concept behind it is that Woodward was particularly interested in the moments just after the peak and before the impending change. We were not sure what would come of it. It really turned out more surprising than we could have imagined- 90 paintings making it one of the largest theme galleries on the website.

It is not perfect. We had to make some educated guesses. One of the key factors was, 'when did it exhibit?' If it hung at the So. Vermont Artist Assoc. in mid-August, it was not a late summer scene. If it exhibited in December, January, February or March thereafter- it was late summer.


06-01-2024 NEW PICS

At Peace

This is embarrassing, but we have had a terrible picture of this painting on the website unnecessarily for so many years. That has been corrected.


The Peace of Years

Mining for a better image of this painting was the product of the "Late Sum-mer" gallery and our new found ways to locate Dr. Mark's original pictures, along with better methods of image editing. We wish we had a color image. It was a fav of the artist.


Dooryard Elm

This is still a poor image because the original is poor, however, we got hold of its original scan and worked on it a bit. Hopefully, it helps give you a better sense of this "Late Summer" scene.


05-28-2024 NEW PICS

Out of The Past

Again, another "Late Summer" scene, the first in a series of 3, maybe 4, similar paintings. It is still a blurry sepia, but that is because the negative we have is blurry. However, there was once a crisp negative of this painting because it was used twice in print and we included those images for you.


The Proud Elm

More of the same here... we got our hands on a better image of this sepia and made it better with our new techniques.


The Three Chimneys

This pastel version of The Proud Elm also got an upgrade in quality with a more accurate color balance in a better high resolution.


05-22-2024 NEW PIC/ UPDATE

Sugaring

The image of this painting, unfortunately is a copy of a copy. It was taken from an old faded photograph and up to now there was no way to get a higher resolution out of it. While the image is still poor you will clearly make out the sugar-shack seemingly located in the sugarbush. We had to do some homework as to the difference between a sugar grove and a sugar bush


In The Sugar Bush

It was our audit of this page that led us to the previous artwork above. Its name gave us a different picture in our heads than the articles describing it. This page was updated to included the definition of a sugar bush and some links.


05-15-2024 UPDATED

Inside the Old Barn

This page was updated by our audit. It appears to be one of as many as six paintings inside the Keach barn; this painting being one of the earliest.


In The Spring

This painting was also part of our audit and while we did not need to make many changes, we included it here to draw your attention to what RSW said was, "One of my most perfect windows," along with an early color picture taken by his friend of the painting next to the arranged window!


The Old Yellow House; Dover

This page was very outdated. We updated it to include RSW's best customer, Adaline Frelinghuysen.


04-30-2024 ANOTHER ONE!

Mountain Meadow

Mislabeled as a chalk from the very beginning of the website. This paint-ing has been proven not only to be an oil but it is the painting we identified as New England in October just last month. It would make it the fourth painting in a series we thought stopped at three.



New England in October

Lesson learned... there was one discrepancy when we linked a color picture to this painting name. Its current owner had done their won homework and traced the provenance back to its original buyer which dif-fered from the one RSW gives. Since we know of no example of RSW ever making such a mistake- we doubted the owner to our own embarrassment.


04-29-2024 CHANGES MADE

The Road Home

This painting and the one listed below have similar issue to that of Mountain Meadow and its sibling. It was also mislabeled a chalk drawing since the start of the website. Only for these two paintings, it is also likely that they are the same painting because we do not have the information we have for the other group. It complicates the matter that the difference is two transposed words.


The Home Road

Page undated to reflect the info above.


04-27-2024 NEW PIC

Unnamed: Along a Hill Road

We found this new image in website founder Dr. Mark's copious volume of file folders. The image is a higher resolution than the previous but you will see that the problem with quality was not just the low-res image. This painting might be one of the artist earliest "hill road" pieces. Also found with the old sepia are two photos of the luxurious room it once hung. It is a great treat, enjoy!

The painting is still listed as unnamed as we work to confirm our suspicions.


04-24-2024 NEW PICS

Dooryard Elm

As we always promise, we do all we can to get the best possible pictures of Woodward's work. It is not always possible. We publish what we have primarily to locate the paintings. Countless painting owners have reached out to supply new pics. While still not perfect, this pic is better than the previous.



The Little Guest House Court

Another find from the depth of Dr. Mark's records and it is much better than the previous.


04-21-2024 NEW PIC

Unnamed: The Keach Farmyard, 1928

We are not even a third of the way through web-site founder, Dr. Mark's file folders and we have caught so many trea-sures. This pic we grab-bed from a torn photo-graph of someone's home. We believe it was taken by RSW friend, F. Earl Williams. It is not the best image, BUT, one can clearly see that it is of what RSW called "the farmyard" along side of the "little red barn" from a perspective unlike any other painting of the same subject.


04-17-2024 NEW PICS

Town Farm in May

As much as we love redundancy, we have been trying to eliminate having double artwork pages for the same paint-ing. Usually, this results from the painting's name being changed later either by Woodward, for whatever reason or be-cause the owner has a name they like. None-theless, for this artwork we will two pages for the piece, for now...


New England Memories

... the new picture while better is still not great. However, this one has much better color bal-ance than the previous one.


04-15-2024 NEW PIC

In the Sugar House

This image is the same as the previous one, only with a much higher resol-ution. The biggest ob-stacle with the new web-site (2009) is that all of the original scans of let-ters A through I, were cor-rupted in their original PowerPoint slides made by Dr. Mark (2002). We have been trying to re-cover them somehow for years. But there may be a light at the end of this tunnel. We are finding some of the lost prints in Dr. Mark's file folders and we just located a cashe of old CDs!!! Cross your fingers.


04-12-2024 NEW PICS

Unnamed: Great Resilience

Not only did we find a new better picture in Dr. Mark's files of this painting we have known of since the website's beginnings. We found a way to edit it so that we can now tell you what it is, if not what its name is.


04-08-2024 UPDATED PAGE

In The Afternoon Sun

A new high resolution sepia print image along with new thoughts as to why this is only one of no more than a handful of chalk drawings sepias.

It was also updated as part of our website audit where we are now in the "I" gallery, as is the one listed below...


In The Hills

This page was updated as part of the website audit we are performing.


04-07-2024 NEW PIC

In the August Sun

Coincidentally enough, just a day or two after we did an audit of this page did someone email us a photograph of this painting signed and given as a gift by the artist! We have added the picture and provided some information as to the connection of the gift's recipient and the artist.


03-24-2024 UPDATED

In October Hills

The next painting on the list for our audit turned out to be much more than we expected. This is the first of 3 very similar com-posite paintings made by Woodward between the winter of 1942 and some-time in late 1944. All three paintings are differ-ent sizes. Each one has tiny variations and differ-ences in the scenes that prompted us to update a total of 5 web pages which led to the discovery of two new images as well as the swapping of names of two images we incorrectly labelled years ago.


03-31-2024 UPDATED

Through October Hills

The second painting of this series of similar scenes put together by Woodward using two other paintings was intended for the same customer as the first and it was still not sold. Woodward drastically changed the perspective. He altered both the tree grouping to the left and stonewall on the right for a more dramatic effect.

However, we had used the wrong image to identify this painting because of how similar it is to the THIRD painting of the same scene with a slightly different perspect-ive and size! RSW gives us just enough inform-ation on each painting for us to put it all together.


04-06-2024 UPDATED

Wind'll Blow Hill

Researching the issue above we found a new and better sepia image swapping it out with the old one.


Just After Haying Time

Minor updates were made and added.




New England in October

The third and more tempered painting of Woodward's composite series using the farm from Just After Haying Time and the road of Wind'll Blow Hill to paint this very romantic scene. It was not until we did an overlay of the two images we had of these painting did we discover we had them mixed up according to RSW's painting diary.


03-27-2024 NEW PAGE

In Old Boston, oil, 27"x 30"

There has always been confusion surrounding this painting that border-ed on an existential crisis- it is or is it not a painting? Well, we have confirmed that it is. Not only that, we sort out the whole mess that is Woodward's Bos-ton paintings to learn that there are 6 Old Boston paintings, of 2 different scenes all exhibiting between 1931 and '35.


Old Boston, oil, 40"x 50"

This painting is one of 3 of the same scene seen in the chalk drawing by the same name, In Old Boston. This was estab-lished after discovering this piece hung with the pastel at the Mt. Holyoke College event in 1931.


04-03-2024 UPDATED

In Old Boston, Chalk

Three paintings, 2 oils and this chalk, all with basically the same name, does not make it easy on us to figure out what is what in regard to the Boston paintings but thank goodness RSW kept this pastel for himself. Otherwise we would have no idea what there is a second scene the artist also painted in oil as well.


In Old Boston, oil, 36"x 42"

This page was updated to reflect the new inform-ation established by the exhibition list. However, we did add a cool feature illustrating an image of the scene from In Old Boston, chalk, to make a list of all of the art work in the order we believe they were made and identify-ing what is the subject of the painting- - neighbor-hood or oyster house.


01-04-2024 RESTORED!

When Drifts Melt Fast

This painting owned by the estate has deterior-ated so much over the past decade it was pack-ed and stored until we could get it restored. One of the artist most cele-brated paintings, it was never sold and the rea-son may very well have been because RSW knew it would not last the test of time.

We have new pictures and illustrations that demonstrate the evolu-tion of this painting from a 40" x 50" to its current size of 24" x 36" along with before and after images.


01-11-2024 QUESTIONS

In Apple Blossom Time

A painting name we have no image for and only one record of (a news-paper article) comes into question. Is it really a painting or was the name mistaken for another painting omitted from the article? While we could not come to any answer with confidence, the questions tell an interest-ing story that links two paintings made at the same location, roughly at the same time- one with an unquestioned name and the other, nameless. The nameless one could very well be the painting by this name only we have no way of confirm-ing it.


01-18-2024 NEW IMAGE

Up the Winter Valley

We recently came across a picture of this painting's sepia print that is better than the one we were using. It was found in the pictures Larch took during his visit to the Smithsonian a couple of years back. It was found in the "Harold Grieve" papers of Woodward's collection.

We have updated the pictures, including a never before used photograph of Woodward at his desk taken by his friend F. Earl Williams, also in the Smithsonian. We also link the scene to two other paintings.


01-25-2024 SPECIAL ITEM

In November

As part of our artwork page audits we are also re-thinking the inform-ation we have for each piece and connecting it with other related pieces. For this 1946 painting, sold to the artist dear friend Ethel Dow, the related piece is a sketch made of the same scene sometime in the mid-1930s. RSW mentions in his painting diary that Ethel had been saving for several years to buy a painting and that this one, "seemed to hold her choice of 'everything'," and we are wondering if he had arranged this all intentionally? Read the story and see how we put a few things together indicating a poetic fate.


01-31-2024 OTHERS

In Early March

This page has been reorganized and updated, however, there is now a question as to here the name came from because a label on the stretcher has a different name.


In Keach's Barn

A painting name with no image, but not hard to surmise the subject and scene of the painting we suspect might have been made special for Wood-ward's first Smith College exhibition.


In New England

Another painting name with no image. Still, we offer some possibilities of what the subject of this chalk drawing may be...


11-11-2023 NEW GALLERY

Award Winners Gallery

The moment the idea came to us we realized it was necessary, for context, to assemble an image gallery solely devoted to Woodward's award winning paintings. There are twenty that we know of in his 37 year career. Two paintings won two awards each making it actually 18 total paintings. We pictures of 18 of the winners, and one is an image of a smaller version of the original. We also include the 3 paintings invited to 3 World Fairs as well as the four paintings to hang at the 1938 International Rotary Convention held in Boston.


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