RSW's Diary Comments

Editor's Note:

When Corn is Ripe

It is unfortunate that we do not have a better image of this drawing. The picture above is from the early days of the website (2002 - 2005) when Dr. Mark was making the artwork pages on Microsoft PowerPoint slides. The thing is, this pastel painting does not have a slide and the original picture has been lost. We cannot find it in the collection.

We are not sure we even have the whole image above. It appears to be over cropped. Below, we have pretty good images of Woodward's signature and name written at the bottom of the painting but they are not visible in the image above.

If the pastel was over cropped, then we can't be sure of the size. As it is now, it measures to the same size as When Corn is Ripe (22" x 27") seen to the upper right. But that is a rare size for a pastel. If Grey Boards is the same size, they are the only two we know of.

A picture of the drawing's name

A picture of Woodward's signature

This chalk drawing was made in the early 1920s of the back side of the Keach farm on Charlemont Road, Buckland, Mass. ( See Twins Barns, the left barn, for context)

This small charcoal drawing was originally purchased by Mrs. Henry (Josephine) Everett. After her death most of the Woodwards she had purchased  were  bequeathed to the Art  Institute  of

Mrs. Josephine P. Everett

Pasadena which had first choice of all of her collect-ion. This drawing and the chalk drawing The Proud Rooster were not chosen by the museum and were left to be auctioned. RSW purchased them both back. Grey Boards was then sold to a Greenfield man. The Proud Rooster was copied by RSW into an oil painting which then sold under the title Passing a Barn at Noon.

It is remarkable that Woodward bought back TWO of his pastels (he called Chalk Drawings) from an auction no less suggest how important these pieces were to the artist. Mrs. Everett is a huge and early supporter of Woodward. A famous collector and notorious patron of the arts she is relatively anonymous to the public. Her greatest legacy, outside all the art she has given to museums, is that her obituary in the Los Angeles Times credited her with wrting the check that bought the land where the Hollywood Bowl would be built. Her home in Pasadena is a Landmark and today houses The Shakespeare Club of Pasadena.

Woodward most likely met Josephine, perhaps through his father's business, real estate development, in either Ohio where the Everetts are originally from or Los Angeles when the Woodwards moved out there in 1905, young Rob arriving a year later in 1906...