Featured Artwork: Aeolus: Home of the Winds

RSW's Diary Comments

In one of the Woodward notebooks, dated Sat. July 15, 1950, is the following quote:

In one of the Woodward notebooks, dated Sat. July 15, 1950, is the following quote: "Clear, brilliant 'June Sky' day. Everything against it but decided to go to Manchester today with Mark to try to begin a chalk drawing for the coming exhibition. Mark packed the car with the chalk things (alone and forgetting nothing) and we started in the Packard about 10 over the trail to N. Adams. Stopped there for stationary errand. On through Bennington. Sandwich lunch with much trouble over my teeth. Quite a little this side of Arlington where Equinox, Aeolus, etc. first show plainly, suddenly decided to make my drawing. Finally got located in the middle of an open field and set up work about 12:30. Mark went across the field into the shade with his typewritter doing over my address book. I worked til 5 feeling I was making a good thing. Since through so early and so comparatively near home decided (in order to give Mark his evening with Barbara) to come right home and not go to Manchester or the Grandahls or go in to formal supper as planned. Tried to find a clean sandwich place from Bennington on even in N. A. but failed until we reached the first of the trail. From Mohawk Park over the back way by 8:15, the sun still up."



Additional Notes

"Here is seen a mountain of entrancing blue with a pasture in the foreground that would seem more like a trysting-place for fairy folk than an ordinary meadow for prosaic cows to roam."Given by the estate of Harriet Newhall (former director of admissions at Mount Holyoke College---Class of 1914) to Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Mass."


Exhibition in Pynchon Art Galleries, Springfield, Mass., by Jeannette C. Matthews

"....well, some will call it scenery, but I call it fantasy. Mr. Woodward used a gravel pit for a model. I had almost said an ordinary gravel pit, but of course it wasn't that, it was a gravel pit set like a rough diamond in a circle of wild hills, blue-green mountains, they are, and set off by the color of that gravel pit, with the magic of Mr. Woodward's design and the fire of his title. It is quite as nice a Home of the Winds as ever old Odysseus discovered." See Clipping Below


Springfield Early Republican, Springfield, Mass.; Thurs. Dec. 12 ? year

"....In Aeolus: Home of the Winds is seen a mountain of entrancing blue with a pasture in the foreground that would seem more like a trysting-place for fairy folk than an ordinary meadow for prosaic cows to roam."


Aeolus: Home of the Wind

AEOLUS was the father of the winds in Greek mythology. The winds lived with their father on the Aeolian Islands. Aeolus kept them in bags and set them free according to his whims. The term "windbag" had its origin in the legend. For more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolus


Aeolus: Home of the Wind

Please click on the following link to see Robert Strong Woodward's Packard Scrapbook Page with more photos and tidbits including the original manual!






Below: Springfield Republican, 1929, by Jeanette C. Matthews