Quick Reference

Time Period:
Prior to 1929

Location:
Unknown

Medium:
Oil on Canvas

Type:
Landscape

Category:
Trees, Pastures

Size:
40 x 50

Exhibited:
Myles Standish Galleries, 1929
Stockbridge (MA) Public Library, '30
Smith Coll. Tryon Gallery, 1931
Mt. Holyoke Coll. Dwight Hall, 1931

Purchased:
Unknown

Provenance:
N/A

Noteworthy:

Between 1928 and 1932 RSW made a number of 40 x 50 sized paintings. The only other time period that equals it is in his early career years between 1918 and 1922.

Related Links

Featured Artwork: Top of The Pasture

RSW's Diary Comments

A photograph from the showroom of the 1929
Myles Standish Gallery Exhibition. It would be Wood-
ward's first of many - the most prominent shows be-
ing, this one, the 1931, and 1944. Woodward would
have a very close relationship with the hotel, often
leaving paintings hang in the hotel's dinning room
or lobby for years at a time.

Editor's Note:

Unfortunately, Woodward excluded this painting from his Painting Diary. However, we know that it was much loved by the artist. For one thing, he also made and exhibited at the 1929 Pynchon Gallery a chalk drawing named From the Pasture Top which is very likely the same scene in pastel. The Pynchon show was Woodward's only known exclusively "pastel" exhibition. The other thing is that the provenance of this painting shows Woodward gave this painting as a wedding gift to people very near and dear to him...

To the left is a photograph found in the artist's scrapbooks of the showroom at the Myles Standish Hotel Gallery in 1929. The painting holds a place of honor next to the celebrated painting, The South Window


Additional Notes

Top of the Pasture sepia print
Top of the Pasture sepia print

Boston Sunday Post, May 19, 1929:

"'Top of the Pasture' with a pair of luxuriantly-leaved maples bowing slightly in the breeze, silhouetted against a glorious blue sky with fluffy clouds above the distant deeper blue of rolling hills, reminds us of the story of the man who left his New Hampshire hilltop with his view of Kearsarge, Monadnock and other mountains to seek his fortune in a mid-western city, but who came back shortly with the one laconic plaint- --'he could not see off'."


This painting was found in an attic. It is not know how long it was there or why it was stored there. We suspect that new circumstances forced it to be stored in the attic, perhaps because of its shear size. Not many 40" x 50" paintings fit on the walls of regular modern homes.


RSW's signature from the lower right hand corner
RSW's signature from the lower right hand corner

There is some slight damage to the canvas due to how it was stored over how many years. But for being in an attic, with their extreme swings in temperature, the painting itself is in remarkable shape.

The painting is signed (see signature to the right) and exhibited four times between 1929 and 1931. It was at this time in Woodward's career that he made a number of epic 40 x 50 paintings. Starting with the 1930 Boston Tercentennial Gold Medal winning, New England Drama; There is also... Maple Sugaring, New England Origins, Out of the New England Soil, Old Boston, and Enduring New England.

These large paintings would be the last. Woodward would exclusively turn to the 36" x 42" size canvas from 1934 on.