RSW's Diary Comments

Mount Haystack in Pawlet today (10/11/2020)

"Painted in 1935. Painted of Haystack while visiting the Grondahls."

Comments on the back of a sepia print:

"Brilliant blue sky, gray rocky dome with red splashes of foliage, orange, gray and yellow foreground. Late October."

From the Editors: "The Search for a Rock in Vermont"

There was no plan. We set out to just make a day trip to the Manchester, VT area. We stopped at the Robert Frost Museum in Shaftsbury, drove up Mount Equinox, lunched at Mulligans, visited the Manchester Country Club and tried to find the Southern Vermont Art Center. At the end of an already full day, we set out to find Haystack in Dorset. GPS said Dorset was just 5.9 miles away. Sixteen miles later way beyond Dorset, we come to a fork in the road, take a guess and after a few minutes we see it, Haystack! We take the first right we can and find ourselves as close to where Woodward painted this painting as we can get. We are closer than RSW was when he painted it. He was up higher and farther back meaning, the road (Waite Hill Road) seen in the lower righthand side of the painting is where we took our pictures.

A scan of RSW's diary showing he crossed out original name "Vermont" and adding Pawlet

To flesh out the faint writing on the stretcher
we created a negative image to highlight it better.

We suspect this painting probably hung at the Southern Vermont Artist Association's (SVAA) annual show in 1936 but can't confirm it yet. The SVAA began in 1927. Woodward was an original member. We have every year of the organization's annual show programs, from 1935 to Woodward's retirement in 1952, except for 1936. We believe this for two reasons, the first is that, Woodward made Vermont specific paintings especially for the SVAA event. The second is he traveled much farther than usual to paint this canvas, perhaps his hope was that the Grondahls would purchase it. When they didn't, the next best option would be the SVAA.

To the right: An picture taken of the back of the ⮞ stretcher, in very faint pencil, you can make out the original name of this piece, "A Mountain in Vermont." We did everything we could to flush out the faint writing on the back of the stretcher.

The name is also connected to another painting, see... A Mountain in Vermont

The name of this mountain in Pawlet, VT is "Haystack" which is referenced in RWS's diary. It is not the only mountain in Vermont named Haystack. There is another in Wilmington... see, Mount Haystack Over Sadawga