Calendars
|
A sneak peak! |
Buckland Historical Society’s beautiful, full color, 2025 Calendar of Robert Strong Woodward’s paintings, entitled, 'Buckland Hills’, to benefit the Buckland Historical Society, is now available.
We cannot say he painted every hill in the small town, but 10 of the 12 named hills within its borders appear in this, the 18th issue of the calendar series.
It is difficult to impress upon you the extent of Woodward's love for his home because it was shaped during his youth and the difficulties he endured that contributed to the fabric of the man he would become. Home simply meant something different to him. As he puts it in an interview with the Boston Evening Transcript's Margaret Getchell in 1920, he explains:
'I was born here in Shelburne Falls and although while I was a boy I had no home, for my father was traveling and we would go with him, settling for a few months in one city and then in another, still we always came to Shelburne in the summer. So, when I found that I must select one place to live in all the time, I came back to my boyhood home...'
It may be perhaps the one place he felt the safest. It is hard to resist such a sentiment, especially after his accident that left him paralyzed and the illness that would force him to leave the School of Fine Arts in Boston after working and scrounging for four years in California, saving and raising money waiting for the school's new campus to be finished where he will be able to get around because it will be on ground level and not the 4th floor of the old museum.
Asked about his years in the greater Los Angeles area, he sums up how important the Buckland Hills are to his spirit, both sentimentally and creatively:
'I could not paint in California all the year-round, while here in Shelburne there is fresh inspiration each month. I can't tell you how strongly I feel about the hills. I have lived here so much and have grown to love them so that it seems as though I had almost become a part of them. They have so much to say to me, that I want to express it to the world. They seem even more paintable than large mountains: there is something so intimate about them.'
There you have it; who would Woodward be without his Buckland Hills, the driving force behind his life's work?"
I stick to- "The hills spoke to him..." and "He felt connected to them in a very intimate way... they were not only home, they protected him and made him feel insulated, where he can just be himself, and safe."
Go to www.robertstrongwoodward.com, where you can see more of our local artist. Woodward was a New England artist from Buckland, MA, 1885-1957, and sold his work to celebrities such as Jack Benny, George Burns, and Robert Frost. Woodward was born in Northampton in 1885. At the age of 21, Woodward suffered an accidental gunshot wound and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He settled in Buckland, MA, on his uncle's farm and turned to painting. During his career, he lost 3 studios to fire. In his lifetime, Woodward painted around 600 oils and 285 known chalks. Through his landscapes, barn paintings and window pictures, Woodward documented a passing New England. He died of stomach cancer in 1957.
Quoted from the website www.robertstrongwoodward.com
“Woodward fancied himself as a rugged man. He once described himself as, "...no languishing lily - but instead a hirsute, pipe
smoking cuss that knows real work and vigor..." He was always described in articles as vigorous and suntanned. If it not for his accident we imagine the artist would have lived a life of travel and adventure, not dissimilar to that of Hemingway. He was at his heart a romantic adventurer.
You look up the definition of rugged and you can convince yourself it is describing New England itself- rocky, uneven, and broken. The scars and rubble left behind by glaciers. Woodward saw a special beauty in the "make-do" attitude of those who can take such wreckage and gather it up to assemble the stonewalls New England may be best known.
Yet still, it is not just the good fences they make but also the foundations many structures are built on... The rock ledge that one builds their sugar house, or the hill-mound of earth deposited by the nearby river to create a fertile farming meadow at its foot. The retaining wall that keeps your barn from collapsing to the pasture below; to the jutting hard ledge of a high hill top that permits a lonetree to bury its roots deep into its layer in order to withstand the decades of storms and strong winds it will endure.
The adaptation of a people to their environment makes it nearly impossible to not embody the character it holds. The two merge to become synonymous of each other. Critics and commentators frequently point out Woodward's special familiarity with New England. We believe that it is at this depth that only a man such as himself, with all he has been through and experienced, connects with the region unlike anyone else. There is no one that sees or expresses New England the way Woodward does.”
We cannot say he painted every hill in the small town, but 10 of the 12 named hills within its borders appear in this, the 18th issue of the calendar series.
It is difficult to impress upon you the extent of Woodward's love for his home because it was shaped during his youth and the difficulties he endured that contributed to the fabric of the man he would become. Home simply meant something different to him. As he puts it in an interview with the Boston Evening Transcript's Margaret Getchell in 1920, he explains:
'I was born here in Shelburne Falls and although while I was a boy I had no home, for my father was traveling and we would go with him, settling for a few months in one city and then in another, still we always came to Shelburne in the summer. So, when I found that I must select one place to live in all the time, I came back to my boyhood home...'
It may be perhaps the one place he felt the safest. It is hard to resist such a sentiment, especially after his accident that left him paralyzed and the illness that would force him to leave the School of Fine Arts in Boston after working and scrounging for four years in California, saving and raising money waiting for the school's new campus to be finished where he will be able to get around because it will be on ground level and not the 4th floor of the old museum.
Asked about his years in the greater Los Angeles area, he sums up how important the Buckland Hills are to his spirit, both sentimentally and creatively:
'I could not paint in California all the year-round, while here in Shelburne there is fresh inspiration each month. I can't tell you how strongly I feel about the hills. I have lived here so much and have grown to love them so that it seems as though I had almost become a part of them. They have so much to say to me, that I want to express it to the world. They seem even more paintable than large mountains: there is something so intimate about them.'
There you have it; who would Woodward be without his Buckland Hills, the driving force behind his life's work?"
I stick to- "The hills spoke to him..." and "He felt connected to them in a very intimate way... they were not only home, they protected him and made him feel insulated, where he can just be himself, and safe."
Go to www.robertstrongwoodward.com, where you can see more of our local artist. Woodward was a New England artist from Buckland, MA, 1885-1957, and sold his work to celebrities such as Jack Benny, George Burns, and Robert Frost. Woodward was born in Northampton in 1885. At the age of 21, Woodward suffered an accidental gunshot wound and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He settled in Buckland, MA, on his uncle's farm and turned to painting. During his career, he lost 3 studios to fire. In his lifetime, Woodward painted around 600 oils and 285 known chalks. Through his landscapes, barn paintings and window pictures, Woodward documented a passing New England. He died of stomach cancer in 1957.
Quoted from the website www.robertstrongwoodward.com
“Woodward fancied himself as a rugged man. He once described himself as, "...no languishing lily - but instead a hirsute, pipe
smoking cuss that knows real work and vigor..." He was always described in articles as vigorous and suntanned. If it not for his accident we imagine the artist would have lived a life of travel and adventure, not dissimilar to that of Hemingway. He was at his heart a romantic adventurer.
You look up the definition of rugged and you can convince yourself it is describing New England itself- rocky, uneven, and broken. The scars and rubble left behind by glaciers. Woodward saw a special beauty in the "make-do" attitude of those who can take such wreckage and gather it up to assemble the stonewalls New England may be best known.
Yet still, it is not just the good fences they make but also the foundations many structures are built on... The rock ledge that one builds their sugar house, or the hill-mound of earth deposited by the nearby river to create a fertile farming meadow at its foot. The retaining wall that keeps your barn from collapsing to the pasture below; to the jutting hard ledge of a high hill top that permits a lonetree to bury its roots deep into its layer in order to withstand the decades of storms and strong winds it will endure.
The adaptation of a people to their environment makes it nearly impossible to not embody the character it holds. The two merge to become synonymous of each other. Critics and commentators frequently point out Woodward's special familiarity with New England. We believe that it is at this depth that only a man such as himself, with all he has been through and experienced, connects with the region unlike anyone else. There is no one that sees or expresses New England the way Woodward does.”
Pick up your copies at the following locations:
Boswell's Books, 10 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, MA
Buckland Public Library, 30 Upper Street, Buckland, MA
Nancy L. Dole Used Books & Ephemera, 20 State Street, Shelburne Falls, MA
Andy's and the Oak Shop, 352 Deerfield Street, Greenfield, MA