RSW's Diary Comments

The only color image we have of November Holiday

"Painted in fall 1940. First painting I made from windows of Heath Pasture House as it was being erected, so a really emotional favorite of mine. Beech tree, ledges, November hills. Bought by graduating class of 1952 and presented to Gardner High School (Mass.)"

Editor's Note:

November was Woodward's favorite month in so many ways, poetically, in post-autumn colors, and none more so than the pasture in Heath named "Burnt Hill." See Also:
   ♦ After Rain
   ♦ From a November Pasture
   ♦ High Pastures
   ♦ The Lone Tree
   ♦ November Light
   ♦ Under the November Sky
   ♦ A View from Burnt Hill

The Boston Globe, March 31, 1940
"What is considered by many to be the most popular art show in Boston opens this afternoon with a preview invitation tea and welcomes the public for a two weeks' free showing. It is the 11th annual exhibition of paintings
by contemporary New England artists---the cream of the crop---held at the Jordan Marsh Co. Galleries on the 5th
floor of the annex. November Holiday, is Robert Strong Woodward's wonderful scene of a wind-swept hilltop,
stark, yet warm, looking over to a distant mountain range."

Williams and Woodward in front
of the Pasture Studio

Excerpt from an email:

"This painting was admired very much by a close friend of RSW, F. Earl Williams (see Friends of Woodward essay). He was at the time principal of Gardner High School in Gardner Mass. and was influential in a graduating class buying it as a gift to their alma mata. It hung there in the auditorium for many years."

⮞ This painting was removed from the high school for security reasons and is currently hung in a room of the new Gardner Public Library.