Art Digest Critique
COMMENT BY THE EDITOR OF ART DIGEST MAGAZINE:
"For a New York art critic to be quoted in The Art Digest, is calculated to lift the critic out of a regional morass. However, to get quoted in this department, he has to say something constructive, destructive, interesting or inspirational. To exclude the perfunctory things the New York critic sometimes says, just to "represent" the artist or the gallery, is to do a kindness to the critic, artist and gallery."
WOODWARD WINS PRAISEREPRINTED FROM THE ART DIGEST February 15th, 1935.
The spirit of New England as echoed in Robert Strong Woodward's canvases at the MacBeth Galleries brought responsive and sympathetic reviews from the critics. Even Henry McBride, who tried to think up some witticisms about real estate and Woodward's rural scenes, was conquered by the artist's sincerity and ability. In the Sun he characterized Woodward as being "about the best landscapist among the present day Academicians...On the whole, there are so many 'enticing facts' in this artist's array of canvases that I am ashamed of playing the role of hyper critic and incline toward accepting them anyhow."Malcolm Vaughan of the American found him "mellowed." "His knowledge and perceptions have grown ripe. He who once was a recorder of landscape facts is now a poet of nature, one who sees the factualities as but integral parts of a single, glowing harmony. Every aspect of his art has deepened. His drawing is more fluent and succinct, his forms at once more definite and more locked within his design, his coloring stronger yet more serene, and his feeling more articulate."
To Howard Devree of the Times, Woodward "has a feeling for the panoramic values in landscape. He has, too, succeeded in imbuing his material with a sense of familiarity-leaving the beholder with the feeling that this is country one has visited but failed to appreciate. Here are the weather-beaten dwellings epitomizing a passing New England."