RSW's Diary Comments

An image of the original photograph.

Editor's Note:

We have had this picture for decades. We initially un-named it "Where Four Walls Meet," but that is not entirely accurate. The picture of this painting is obviously a pasture. You can see, even from the picture to the right, there are stone walls in the scene. Because we only had this low resolution image we could not manipulate it enough to straighten it out, that is until, we came across the picture recently (April 2026) and got the idea to scan it at a very high resolution, like a 1200dpi pixel depth.

Double Victory, c. 1940: the tree to the left is the
broken tree in the painting above. From this perspect-
ive shift yourself counter clockwise to the left

⮜ ⮝ Having re-scanned the image at that resolution allowed us to correct the perspective to the aspect ratio of a 25" x 30" canvas (27" x 30" did not work and it is obviously not a 36" x 42" size). Now we can see the scene and subject well enough to see the broken tree used in a couple paintings. It is the one nearest to the featured Beech Tree. There are four stone walls that meet nearby but not from this vantage point.

Over The Pasture Ledge

What you can't see in Double Victory is the small pine tree. but there is another pastel painting that shows the small pine and the steep drop to a lower pasture just beyond the stone wall seen in Double Victory.

Over The Pasture Ledge to the right ⮞ shows the small pine tree (the pine to the right) that appears in the painting above. The broke (maple) tree is to the left of this perspective. Investigating this area of the Burnt Hill pasture has produced more paintings than we expected. In the next section we just filled it with pictures of the numerous perspectives. However, with think that the second broken maple did not survive and was cut...

The Double Victory Trees: Photograph by,
H.R. Ashworth, Shelburne Falls, Mass.

From a May Hill

Where Four Stone Walls Used To Meet