“Ancient Music” is a poem by Ezra Pound:
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ’gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMN.
Woodstock winters, as winters everywhere, are mostly experienced through the eyes of their beholders. In his poem published in 1912, Ezra Pound felt winter’s coming in our climate in implacably negative terms, a foe to be opposed to one’s last breath.
That’s not how Birge Harrison, a central figure in the Woodstock School of Landscape Painting in operation from 1906 to 1922 under the auspices of the Art Students League of New York, saw winter. “To Harrison the snow was not white only, but took on the wonderful tones of azure, of mauve and of pale and ethereal rose and amber,” wrote one observer. “He painted it as he saw it, in the opulent radiance of dawn, in the golden glow of sunset, or under the pale mystery of twilight skies.” When Woodstock winters weren’t snowy enough, Harrison would head north to Quebec.
Here’s a descriptive passage written by Birge Harrison about Woodstock’s center in winter:
“Within half a mile of the white steeple of the Old Dutch Reformed Church, which marks the center of the village community: First there is the winding Sawkill, with its mills, its falls and its long reaches of quiet water, overhung with branching trees; then the gleaming white houses of the little village itself, seen from the flat meadows, which are intersected everywhere with gently flowing streams and still pools; then the farms, the fields, the forests and the eternal soaring mountains.”
Over time, Harrison’s sunny wintry vision became obsolete within the diversity of the Woodstock arts community. But the natural beauty of Woodstock in all seasons remained the container within which artists experienced the world. Today, as more than a century ago, landscape painting is part of Woodstock.
This Saturday, Oct. 11, will see the opening at the Woodstock School of Art off Route 212 east of the Woodstock hamlet of “In the Open Air: The Art Students League’s Woodstock School of Landscape Painting and Its Impact,” curated by Bruce Weber. The reception at the former Art Students League facility will be from 2 to 4 p.m. Weber will give a gallery talk on Sunday, Oct. 26, at 2 p.m. There will be a panel discussion celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Art Students League on Saturday, Nov. 8. Weber will give the second part of his gallery talk on Sunday, Nov. 30, at 2 p.m.
The show will close Dec. 13.
Join the family! 
