RSW's Diary Comments

Diary Comments for Aged Roofs:

Aged Roofs, 1935

"Painted 1935. Rear of Halifax house from top of mowing in back. Exhibited quite generally about the country. Acquired in the summer of 1945 by my dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. F. Earl Williams of Gardner, Mass."

Comments on the back of a sepia print:

"Late summer in New England. Foreground of uncut old grass, pale yellow and ochre. $450."

Editor's Note:

Years ago the sepia print above got mislabeled as Aged Roofs. In our recent audit of images, fresh review and, update of the artwork pages exposed the error. The difference in the skies alone are enough to see they are not the same. What usually happened was that Dr. Mark would come across an unlabeled sepia and compare it with what he had available to him. Then later we would get new images and confirmation of the painting name and not double check that the other documents match.

What else does not match is the season, the apple trees in bloom above and not in the sepia. So the information on the sepia supplied by Woodward is correct. It is a late summer painting.

Spring Comes to New England, 1947
A similar scene to Aged Roofs, in fact, there is very
little difference at all between the two paintings.
The skies and shadows all appear to be the same,
yet, both names are confirmed by their owners.

This painting of which we only have the above sepia print is probably not unnamed. The term "unnamed" refers to the number of paintings there are that are not named for any number of reasons: they were bought direct from Woodward's studio without a name; or given as a gift by Woodward which was quite common, or they remained in his estate, probably in his storage area, after his death and were typically unfinished in some way but Woodward's cousin Florence sold some of them to settle up the estate's expenses and what have you after his death.

This painting most likely has a name by reason that there is a sepia print and that Woodward actually wrote notes on the back of it. He only did this when sending the sepias to galleries looking to exhibit his work. The description served as the color commentary before color pictures where available.

For years, we numbered paintings we did not have names, but then as we learned the painting's name that number would be retired. However the impersonal numbering also made it very hard to remember what the painting was and a lot of doubles started to appear and the whole thing became a mess.

What we decided to do was give them "unofficial" names. These names either reflect another painting it may be related to or reminiscent of and in other instances, we tried to name it in a way Woodward might do so, focusing on the literalness, like he often did. It make them so much more memorable.

This painting was not so easy. We could have called it, "Late Summer in Halifax