Featured Artwork: From An Autumn Pasture

In an Autumn Pasture, 1939

Over the past couple of years we have been making and effort to provide examples of what might be similar paintings for pages we do not have a picture of the artwork. It is not always easy to tell what may or may not appear to be similar but we make our best guess. This could very well be the Beech Tree on Burnt Hill in Heath, however, we do not have any Fall Beech Tree painting examples from the early 1930s. Woodward did not really paint those scenes until his Heath Pasture Studio was completed in 1940.

It is far more likely this is a painting of the Goodnow Pasture. Our reasoning is simple, Woodward painted a number of paintings in and around the meadows at the foot of Purinton Hill from 1930 thru 1933 where the Goodnow farm was located. Also, we find it more than coincidental that the only difference between this painting's name and that of the 1939 painting is - "In" and "From".

A capture of the handbill for the Gill fine art
gallery from the Historic New England website.

From a note made by Dr. Mark:

"Exhibited at Mr. Gill's Gallery, Springfield, Mass, 1933."

We do not know where this information came from or what was Dr. Mark's source. It does not appear in the exhibition records. But this is not even the more surprising thing! We have NO other references to the "Gill Gallery" on the corner of Main and Bridge Streets in Springfield, MA. Yet, Mr. Gill was close friends with Woodward patron George Walter Vincent Smith and has a significant presence online, particularly a profile on The Frick Collection website. Something Smith does not even have though he is referenced on the page!

However, we have always been curious as to where Woodward exhibited in Springfield after the 1928 J.H. Miller Gallery exhibition. Aside from exhibiting at the Pynchon Gallery of the Springfield Museum System in 1929, we have no record of a gallery in Springfield Woodward regularly displayed his work, despite being a long standing member of the Springfield Art League, and multiple prize winner at their annual show. We are now wondering if the Gill Gallery was initially overlooked by the American Studies Group of the Deerfield Academy, the originators of the list. We have been through their archives and did not come across any letter to the Gill Gallery.