The Pasture House Studio

Robert Strong Woodward rode around the country roads at first with his horse and buggy, and subsequently with an open Packard Phaeton automobile, looking for the places to paint which took his fancy.  One of the places he discovered was at the top of Burnt Hill in Heath where there was a spectacular view and where stood a lone beech tree, windswept from years of harsh weather atop the mountain.   

He made many paintings here and eventually exchanged two oil paintings (Blue Drifts and Autumn Brilliance) with the owners for the abandoned 140 acres of mountain top pasture land. The original owners of this mountain top property were Roswell and Florence Tripp then of Rye, New York and Heath, Mass.  Their summer home in Heath had been burned to the ground by antique thieves and the mountain pasture had little use to them. 

On this land, RSW's hired man, Fabian Stone, built a rustic studio called the Pasture House Studio so that he would be able to continue to paint even on cold winter days.  In those days it was not a town-maintained road out to the property.  Hired help had to keep the road open except in midwinter and in the worst of "mud season."     

At this time the horse shed which was a part of the Mary Lyon Church in Buckland Center was being dismantled.  Cars, not horses, were bringing people to church on Sunday mornings.  Fabian convinced the carpenters to give him the central ceiling beam to be used to "frame up" the new studio on the Heath hilltop.  The beam was supposedly from a local virgin forest in Charlemont and was an extraordinarily long perfectly straight log which ran from one end to the other of this long shed.  Fabian cut it into the proper lengths and  dragged them the long distance up the mountain to the Heath pasture. On this pasture top Fabian proceeded to build the new studio, with of course the artistic advice and experience of the artist himself. 

It was a cabin of sorts with a wood stove and sturdily built outside rock chimney, a full front picture window looking out over the valley toward the beech tree, a privy, an attached garage, a beautiful front stone plaza with stone seating, and a really comfortable inside room.  A garage lean-to addition was constructed on one side which would accommodate the new Packard Phaeton. Parts of the garage were used for storage, a tiny kitchen area with a kerosene cooking stove, a large wood box for feeding the parlor stove, and as mentioned above, the privy. Fabian had built privies into all of the RSW buildings. All were unique. The Heath Pasture House privy was a one--holer with a bucket of lime and a tin cup for sprinkling over one's "doings." This privy, just like all the other Fabian privies, had no door.

There was no running water at the Pasture House, however water did come by lead pipe from a spring down the road a bit where in the old days there had been a house. The cellar hole stone foundation is still very visible. Mention of it was made in the diary notes of the RSW oil painting Three Friends. Close by this cellar hole was a vigorous spring and the water from this was piped up the mountain to just below the Beech Tree by a ram. (For those who are not familiar with a ram click HERE) The antique ram was not capable of lifting the water all the way up to the level of the Studio, but it did pump it up almost to the Beech Tree. (As you continue to learn about the Heath property you will understand why this windswept tree deserves to be capitalized) The old ram was a piece of ingenious equipment. It could be heard making a "chugging" noise from a long distance away. This old Heath Pasture House ram has now been donated to the Heath Historical Society and can be seen there. A ram is able to lift water without need of electricity, hand or horsepower. To simply explain its operation a LARGE amount of water flowing through it was able to push a SMALL amount of water out and up the pipe almost to the level of the Beech Tree.

The Pasture Studio was a one room house heated by an old parlor wood stove. This is the type of stove which heated the Pasture House Studio. It could burn wood or coal. The three draft vents at the bottom front were adjustable for either type of fuel. The top cover could be swung to the side or was easily completely lifted off to expose a flat top for cooking purposes. The cast iron stove front decorations were of black cherubs.

There were several hand braided rugs on the floor, a comfortable couch to lie down on, several stiff New England straight back chairs, a dining table in the center of the room, an old--fashioned mirror, a kerosene ceiling hung lamp and a handsome purple bureau beneath the rear window.

Of course, there was no electricity. All the lighting at night came from oil lamps and candles.

A writer for the Worcester Mass Telegram on June 28, 1942, submitted the following description of a visit to the Woodward Southwick Studio and a trip up to the Heath Pasture House Studio.

Webster's Dictionary:
"Shangri-La: imaginary land depicted in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. A remote beautiful imaginary place where life approaches perfection: Utopia. A remote usually idyllic hideaway."


Shangri-La indeed:
To Robert Strong Woodward, the Heath Pasture Studio was indeed Shangri-La.

It was a place where he could get away from (in his words) "the constant hustle and bustle of nurses, housekeepers, hired men and the stresses of the valley life." He could come here and completely relax and forget the invalid life he had to lead down below. It was also a place where he loved to come to sunbathe. He was an ardent lover of the sun. He felt that it had some sort of power to heal and strengthen his invalid body. Many hours were spent, stripped of his clothes, sitting out on the stone patio of the Pasture Studio, soaking up the sun. He also encouraged those who worked for him to follow in his footsteps and strip down to get the sun on their bodies. Even down in the valley he preferred to have his men work shirtless in shorts so that they could absorb the sun into their systems while working on the lawns. So little was known, back in those days, about the harmful effects of sun radiation and it being the cause of various skin cancers.

THE JITNEY
There is another part of the Heath Pasture Studio story which is interesting to relate. As mentioned above, the Studio was on a piece of land at the far end of an old road from the Oxbow region of Charlemont. The road had long been abandoned. There were no permanent residencies on it. Being abandoned, and no reason for keeping it open for school buses etc., it reverted to those who wished to travel on it to keep the road repaired. This was a job for RSW's hired men. To enable them to do this Fabian, had stripped down an old Model A Ford to the point at which it was simply a motor without a hood, a driver's seat, a steering wheel and controls, and a sort of truck body built onto the rear. This was used to haul gravel to fill in the ruts in the road all the way from the old school at the top of Burnt Hill Road out to the pasture gate. The road consisted of two wheel tracks with grass growing in the center. (Whenever the RSW Packard or Chevy beech wagon went in for service at the Wilcox garage in Greenfield, the garage mechanics marveled at how clean the undercarriage was from being swiped by the grass in the center of this old road. They always remarked that no other cars came in so spotlessly clean. The jitney was kept far back from the Pasture House Studio up against the timber line in a small lean-to.

THE BEECH TREE

As has been recorded above in this essay Robert Strong Woodward was accustomed to ride around the countryside, mostly on weekends, searching for New England scenes to paint. He was undoubtedly one of the so-called "en plain air" painters. In his early days these excursions were made with him driving a buggy drawn by his beloved horse, Thomas à Kempis. During his middle years of painting the vehicle was an open Nash Advanced 6 driven by his hired man, Fabian. In later years the automobile used was a huge Packard Phaeton. During these excursions RSW would want to be driven about 5 or 10 miles per hour, so that he could study and take in the various New England vistas of mountains and valleys, old houses, and especially old barns.

It was on one of these Sunday rides that took him to a Heath pasture top. The story, as I remember it, is that he was alone on this trip driving the horse and buggy by himself. Traveling up hill out of Charlemont into Heath, he came across a mountain top vista which would command a future plethora of oil paintings and chalk drawings. It was also to become a retreat to which he could escape from his valley life of hired men, nurses, housekeepers and the hectic and confined existence of one living in a wheelchair.
It was on this hilltop that RSW discovered THE BEECH TREE. This magnificent unique beech tree had all of its branches swept by the prevailing winds from the west (where Mount Greylock could be prominently seen) to the east (where the mountain ranges from Buckland and Mount Holyoke could be seen.) This beech tree, a marvel of nature, and the result of many years of growth, was produced by the prominent, prevailing, westerly winds of this New England mountain top. One can imagine a young beech seedling sprouting up from among the many wild, low-bush blueberries in this pasture land on the Heath hilltop, and immediately being blown by the wind toward the east. And, as the many years that followed, it was continually, especially in the winter months when the winds were strongest, developing branches all bent toward the east. This is how RSW found the adult tree sometime in the late 1930s. In the following years he was to make hundreds of sketches, chalk drawings and oil paintings of this tree, made from all directions, even from underneath.

It was to be a love of his life. There were frequent summer cook-out picnics around a fireplace built beneath the tree, and there were frequent sleeping bag sleep-overs beneath the tree to enable him to be on the mountain top in order to capture in a painting the early morning light or the late evening light. (See The Evening Moon). The mountain top scenery and especially THE BEECH TREE were to become famous around the entire United States, and, even in England and Scotland. (For many years a winter oil of the beech tree, Snowing On The Hill, hung in the American Embassy in England.)

Will the reader please click HERE to see a collection of images of THE BEECH TREE in various seasons.

It is the feeling and intent of this writer that this splendorous production of hill top botanic life formed by the prevailing westerly winds of New England should now and henceforth be referred to as THE BEECH TREE....in caps!!

The Blueberry Field

Burnt Hill is well known, far and wide, for blueberries: wild low-bush blueberries. The history of Burnt Hill dates back to the days of the American Indian. They are said to have cultivated the berries here since prehistoric days. And they even knew how to foster their growth: burning off the fields every fall. The burning not only kept the brush down but the ashes fertilized the earth. The blueberries loved it.

Thus the name of this Heath mountain: BURNT HILL

During the days when Robert Strong Woodward owned the Heath Pasture he continued to enhance the growth of the wild blueberries. During summer months we who worked for him spent many hours cutting the brush which aggressively sprung up over the entire area. A few seasons, before burning restrictions became so restrictive, we even set fire to portions of the pasture to mimic the Indians who had come before us.

Many, really a great many, times during blueberry seasons when we drove RSW to the Heath Pasture to paint, we brought along in the rear seat of the open Packard Phaeton, a guest or two (Mrs. Buell, Ethel Dow, Cousin Martha, Cousin Florence, Dr. Blakeslee, and many others) to spend the day picking the berries. Most of the time they would simply pick by hand. A few, in the later years, started using a hand tool--picker for faster collection. This method though was fraught with much more unwanted debris and made it necessary for a lot of after cleaning. They would always meet at noon for a cool picnic lunch sitting on the stone seats beneath the Beech Tree.

And what do you think they had for dessert? Blueberries, of course!

The Prehistoric site

There is another fascinating feature of Burnt Hill which goes back in history to the days when the American Indians roamed our countryside, or perhaps well before. They not only came to this hilltop for the blueberries but they apparently also conducted some sort of religious practice here. It has long been known by the local people that there were many unexplained rock formations in this area. There are two interesting links which we are providing for the interested reader. One is scientific and one is not so scientific.

Click HERE to read the story by an inquisitive young man, Faux Doe, who visited Burnt Hill with the intent of learning about all of the rock formations he had heard about.

Click HERE to read an essay by a geologist, Daniel Boudilion, who also made a visit to the area and made detailed recordings of his findings.

There is still a blueberry farm on the hiltop that once belonged to Robert Strong Woodward. For further information, please visit. The Benson Place.

MLP
2014

The black and white photographs below were taken by F. Earl Williams at the Heath Pasture Studio.