RSW's Diary Comments

"Painted about 1931 or 2. View from flat of Hoosac Tunnel depot, of hills of the old Hoosac mountain road and the new Mohawk Trail."

Topographic Map of the tunnel area illustrates
where we believe this painting was painted.

Boston Herald, Oct. 16, 1932

"June Hills, solid rounds of green splashed with sun and shadow, is a rather unusual composition and had it been slightly less literal in its execution would have been an interesting step forward in the career of this artist."

Boston Transcript, Oct. 1932

".....and pleasing, if yet disconcertingly compositionally unbalanced, are the June Hills that swell and roll beneath a deep blue sky, whose banked clouds, incidentally, make valiant but unavailing effort to halt the downward rush of the directing line of horizon."

Painted the year before, Mountain Shoulder shows
the topography illustrated on the map above

June Hills was painted the same year, in the same summer as Mountain Shoulder (late summer, 1930) and the two will be forever linked because they are both different perspective of the Hoosac Tunnel/Deerfield River Valley near Florida, MA., along the Mohawk Trail (MA Rte 2) heading towards North Adams, MA. In each painting you can almost see the vantage point in each painting from which he painted the other.

Addendum, June 30, 2025:

Both June Hills and Mountain Shoulder where incorrectly cite being made in different years because we were missing information on Mountain Shoulder exhibiting in New York in 1931. Doing the math, both paintings exhibited repectively in February in Boston and New York in March of 1931 making them both "late summer 1930 paintings."