If a man’s home is his castle, then perhaps a farmer’s barn is his. Or at least that’s what is behind the gorgeous exhibition of Robert Strong Woodward’s paintings of local barns at Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield.
This exhibition features the painting “Farmers’ Castle,” a dynamic canvas of the Warfield barn in Charlemont. The painting was recently donated to Memorial Hall Museum by John Warfield Glaze and Shirley J. Glaze.
Other works include five privately-owned and rarely-seen paintings of Buckland, Colrain and Charlemont barns.
No farm is complete without a barn. Using perspective to literally heighten the barn on the canvas and in our minds, Robert Strong Woodward (1885 to 1957) succeeded in dignifying this rural structure to a position of honor. Barns, of course, were essential for farmers for housing livestock, grain, hay, manure and equipment. A barn is the center of the farm.
Born in Northampton, Woodward turned to painting as a profession after a gunshot wound paralyzed him from the waist down. He found refuge at his grandparents’ Buckland farm, and in 1910, he briefly studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Woodward ultimately settled in Buckland and had a successful career.
Surrounded by rolling hills and farmlands, Woodward found beauty and inspiration in his neighbors’ barns. Woodward sometimes painted the same barn many times. In a 1938 letter to art critic Royal Cortissoz, Woodward wrote, “My paintings have something beyond — merely the representation of factual truth. … All the tragedy, humor and struggle of New England farm life are found in this painting of mine.”
Especially fond of his barn paintings, Woodward always hoped to mount an exhibition of them, but they were often the first to sell, and he could never keep enough in stock.
Woodward was represented by the Vose Galleries in Boston and Macbeth and Grand Central Galleries in New York. His stilllifes and landscapes were exhibited to critical acclaim in New York, Boston and throughout New England. Over his three-decades-long career, Woodward completed over 750 oil and pastel paintings.
The exhibit can be viewed through Oct. 30, 2017, at Memorial Hall Museum, 8 Memorial St., Deerfield. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for youth and students.
For more information, call 413-774-3768, ext. 80, or visit www.deerfield-ma.org.
The Friends of Robert Strong Woodward organized the show.