RSW's Diary Comments

Heights of Heath, 1947

RSW Diary Comments for Heights of Heath:

"Painted from west window of Pasture House in the early summer of 1947. Flat, horizontal pasture stretches in low foreground, with very dark small, symmetrical pine in left center, silhouetted against the horizon band of distant blue mountains crowned by rounded Greylock. A dramatic tangled mass of summer clouds, broken by small patches of blue tubes up the upper 2/3 of the canvas."

Editor's Note:

You can see from comparing the two paintings looking west to Greylock that the small pine in Heights of Heath is seen farther to the left but just the tip of it. This tells us Woodward is not inside the pasture studio but instead somewhere along the garage attached to its west side. He is farther right in the unnamed painting above.

Heath Cottage front windows and through those
windows is the west window around the corner. You
can also see the attached garage where he sat for this.

It is NOT correct to say this painting is unnamed. We honestly do not know if it has a name. All we have is the sepia print above and the print did not have a name attached to it. This is unusual, because Woodward primarily used these prints to send to galleries to show the agent or curator the general appearance of the painting for their consideration.

This was before color and so he would at times describe the scene and colors used. Most all prints have a name attached to them and all paintings that exhibited in a gallery or museum where named. Most truly unnamed paintings were often bought direct from the artist's studio where he also, on occasion, let the buyer name it.

A tradition we uphold to this day. If an owner would like to name their "Untitled" painting we honor the name of their choosing and if they would like help in naming the painting- we can usually come up with a few Woodward-esque names for them to choose.