Calendars
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A sneak peak! |
Buckland Historical Society’s beautiful, full color, 2024 Calendar of Robert Strong Woodward’s paintings, entitled, 'Rugged New England’, is now available.
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.”
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
Order online HERE!
