RSW's Diary Comments

An Old Farm, 1918

There are no diary comments for this painting name.

Editor's Note:

This is an important painting. It was one of two paintings, a pastel and an oil, that exhibited at the first Boston Art Club's (BAC) inaugural show- the New England Artists' Series; an annual exhibition of young, little-known but talented artists. This was a significant break from tradition at the BAC and controversial. It was also Woodward's FIRST professional exhibition, an entire month before the 1918 National Academy of Design's annual show in New York City for which he submitted and was accepted by jury- The Golden Barn.

Landscape, 1926

Unfortunately we do not have enough of a description to get a sufficient idea of the painting's subject. Still, the name invokes images of a similar painting from around the same time period, An old Farm, seen to the right. Another version, or perhaps the same painting renamed Landscape appears again in the newspapers for the 1926 Lyman Residence exhibition that relaunches his career after the tragic 1922 Redgate Studio Fire


We do not think it is unreasonable to believe this painting may be of the same subject. It could also be similar to another early farm painting, Snow on the Mountain, 1926 whose name has a confusing history.

Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 18, 1918

To the Right- Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 18, 1918:

"Robert S. Woodward's Hill Farm (26) is a very interesting landscape painted in the Berkshire hills. The Falll Fires (24) is especially captivating in its uncompromising veracity, its portraiture of a novel and beautiful motive with its foreground of ledges, farmyard, barns and farmhouse, perched on a slope which leads the eye down to a broad and sweet valley and the hills beyond it, diapered by cloud shadows and, as it were, sleeping in the sunshine."

Boston Herald, October, 1918

To the left- The Boston Herald :

"Robert Strong Woodward; whose habitat would appear to be western Massachusetts, has a remarkably able mountain picture called Hill Farm, panoramic without being grandiose."