Quick Reference

Time Period:
Fall, 1935

Location:
Southwick studio north window,
Buckland, Mass.

Medium:
Oil on Canvas

Type:
Landscape

Category:
Pastures

Size:
30 X 40

Exhibited:
Vose Galleries, 1936, '37, '38
Berkshire Businessmen's AL, 1937
Grand Central Galleries, '38, '41
Williston Academy, 1942

Purchased:
Unknown

Provenance:
NA

Noteworthy:

This is a view of the neighbor's barn from Woodward's North studio window. The barn is no longer standing.

Related Links

Featured Artwork: Back of the Village

RSW's Diary Comments


None.


Editor's Note:

Back of the Village Sepia
Back of the Village Sepia

This feels like a much loved painting and yet, inexplicably there is not a diary entry for it.

How is it that we come to this judgment? Vose, Woodward's new Boston agent as of 1936 holds it intermittently for 3 years, in its gallery and most certainly sending it around the country as well. (we just do not have a record of where, but most likely Dallas, TX, Clearwater, FL, Springville, UT, etc.) It also hangs in the gallery of his New York City representative, the Grand Central Galleries, and then the Williston Academy which is associated with his beloved cousin, poet and, educator Flora White. You might be saying to yourself, "Well it didn't sell very quickly.." but we do not think it was really for sale- - another trait of Woodward's very favorite paintings. It was only available to museums, collectors, or friends.

Finally, his close friend, educator, amateur photographer and, one of the ONLY reason we have pictures of anything, F. Earl Williams arranged the photo below using this painting. This oversight feels equally as puzzling as the omission of a diary entry for December Farm. SEE PHOTOGRAPH BELOW


Additional Notes


RSW signature on painting
Woodward's signature on the painting.

There are two things to note in regard to this painting:

①Woodward is only in his Southwick Home & Studio about a year when this painting first exhibits. The scene is his first fall in the home and studio. Yet it is far beyond the peak of the foliage, suggesting to us that this could be a November painting. November may possibly be Woodward's favorite month for poetic reasons. It is widely considered the month of retirement or repose; an "in-between" place, in a liminal sense, like twilight or an equinox- a threshold or transitional phase. If you like wordplay, the Merriam Webster Dictionary website has a page dedicated to the "in-between."



William's pic of North Window
F. Earl Williams photograph of the north window
taken in the 1940's with this painting on display. Out-
side the window is over exposed, however, one can
can just make of the left side of the apple tree of the
painting and a faint glimpse of the barn behind it.

Another photo of this area. That is Ruth
Williams, Earl's wife, feeding Trigger with the
apple tree and neighbor's barn just beyond them.

②It is obviously painted from his artist north window but it is not a window painting. At this time, his months in the new studio, he has only made one Window Picture for the studio. From the North Window was painted some time shortly after he moved in after March 9th, 1935. From the North Window exhibited the next month and again in May of 1935. We imagine it was his way of christening the new studio.

However, he would not start painting window paintings from the Southwick studio until 1937. There are other paintings Woodward made from the studio's balcony, and driveway of his surroundings. There are even paintings made from his bedroom windows. The landscape surrounding Southwick was exceptionally scenic.

The Southwick Studio would also be his first to be on a hill. His other previous studios, Redgate and the Hiram Woodward Place would be in the valley that runs along the Clesson river to where it meets the Deerfield River.


Paintings Painted from Southwick:

From a Village Yard

Out the Bedroom Window

Busy Sugaring

Four Maple Trees in March

Unnamed: Down the Valley

Spring Silhouette

Sun on the Balcony