b/w etching,
circa 1885
5 15/16 x 3 15/16
signed in pencil.
"Moonlight Glade", a small intimate etching of a New England graveyard, is a remembrance of the artist's roots. There is a quiet reverent calm to this moonlit scene,.
William Woodward, born in Seekonk, Massachusetts, received his art training at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Massachusetts Normal Art School. He taught at the Rhode Island School of Design while still a student there. At the behest of William Preston Johnston, Woodward moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to teach fine arts, mechanical drawing, and architectural drawing at the newly founded Newcomb College of Tulane University. In 1886 he extended his honeymoon through Scotland and England to include a three-month summer study at the Académie Julian in Paris where he found a new direction for his artistic development, seeing for the first time Impressionist works, a style he came to employ in his architectural scenes. He fully embraced French Impressionism giving it a southern "twist" all his own.
