RSW's Diary Comments

"Prior to 1930. A painting of old maples made from Hezekiah Ward's back pasture overlooking the valley to Pocumtuck. This canvas was hung in the home of Robert J. Haeberle and went from there to the home of John Haigis of Greenfield, Mass. for permanent ownership."

The handwritten note on the back of sepia print.

Handwritten note on back of sepia print:

"The ancient tree stands guard on a high knoll - with distant hill and lovely opalescent color across the valley (Photograph does not portray too well the feeling of distance in the painting.) Foreground has blue-gray of rock-ledge, soft pink & yellow of weeds & grasses _ Tree itself is in greens - Sky in distance, hazy gray-violet and soft blue - "

To the right: Is a picture of the back you the sepia print and it's handwritten notably Woodward himself. RSW often wrote descriptions like this because (1) sepias were sent to prospective galleries for exhibit and (2) in the time, sepias images were exclusively black and white.

Editor's Note:

The most unreliable information given by Woodward in his painting diary are the years he made something. This one is especially egregious because, just by looking at it, we can tell you it was made very early in his career within a couple of years of 1920. But as we point out as often as we can, he did not begin to assemble this painting diary until the 1940s and did so most from memory. It is not clear if he kept diaries prior to the one we have. If so, it is possible he lost it in the 1934 Hiram Place fire.

According to Woodward's description, this painting must have been painted from a high position looking north. His reference to "Pocumtuck" is believed to be Mt. Pocumtuck in Charlemont, MA, between Heath and Colrain. We do not know how high up he is, so it is either, Purinton Hill or Lone Tree Hill above that.

Opalescent (o-pal-es-cent):

adjective
"showing varying colors as an opal does."

This painting hangs in a home in Pennsylvania. We appreciate the current owner's graciousness in providing us with the above picture.

Across the Apple Valley

There is another painting attributed with the same name as this painting. However, we believe that the other painting was mistaken for this one given (1) both were painted around the same time, and (2) share a similar subject matter. Still, this painting his a pretty clear history and provenance while the other has no name on its stretcher nor any record in RSW's painting diaries or exhibition records. Below, from Across the Apple Valley's webpage is our account of how we believe this occurred:

Excerpt from Unnamed: Across the Valley's

"We first learned of this painting in 1997 (5 yrs prior to the start of the website) when it came up for auction in New Hampshire. They named it "Across the Valley" and it has stuck despite having no name written on its stretcher. It is possible that the auction house used the 1970 published catalogue of RSW complete works list compiled by the Deerfield Academy's American Studies Group to determine its name. Unfortunately for them, this painting happens to be the ONLY painting Woodward did of this particular size (23 x 23) and so they could not find an exact match. Except, that in and around the same time period (1920 - '23) a painting titled "Across the Valley" was on that list. This was clearly a valley painting and so we believe they took the time period and appropriate-ness of the subject and assigned it." BCM