Jack Woodson
Monument Valley
Oil on Board
4' x 12' Unframed and 5'x13' Framed
$50,000.00
Painted by Jack Woodson in 1955 as a gift to James and Violet Swann on the building of their business location at 2111 Lake Avenue.
James Swann came up with the barnwood for the frame and Jack Woodson created the frame and stained it to coordinate with the painting.
The painting is a view of Monument Valley in Utah and is titled “Monument Valley”. The painting is 48 inches high by 144 inches long including the small frame. With the big frame it measures 60" x 156".
Mr. Woodson had prints of his paintings produced at Art Guild and some of Mr. Woodson’s other customers also had their work produced there too. Mr. Swann died years ago and Mrs. Swann continued to run the business a while. She eventually sold the business to Clyde Willis before passing on herself. Clyde sold the building on Lake Avenue at the end of 2019 and the painting was removed.
The painting has a verbal appraisal from Turner C. Johnson, JR. The verbal appraisal is $50,000.
Taken from “DOWN TO THE SEA WITH JACK WOODSON”
The artistry of a Distinguished American Illustrator by William L. Tazewell and Virginius Dabney
Since he was a boy John Waddie Woodson has been going down to the sea. As Artist and illustrator, he has painted and drawn numerous subjects, but ships and salt water remain his first love. He spent an adult lifetime capturing the look and feel of steamships, sailing ships, workboats, naval history, wharves, watermen – Just about anything having to do with the water.
Now some of the finest work of this distinguished American illustrator has been beautifully reproduced in book form. More than a hundred of his best paintings and drawings, including 32 pages in full color, are on view in Down to the Sea with Jack Woodson, together with a prose essay by William L. Tazewell detailing the story of Woodson’s career, and an introduction by Woodson’s fellow resident of Richmond, Virginia, the noted historian and journalist Virginius Dabney.
Like the Dutch and Flemish masters that he so admires, Jack Woodson has a passion for detail. When he prepares to paint a ship he will often build a scale model first, to make sure that he gets the rigging, the details of superstructure, the actual colors of the ship exactly as they are. “It doesn’t ever pay to guess,” he says.
In the course of a lengthy career beginning in the early 1930’s, Woodson has illustrated books and brochures, done animated films, made documentary movies, painted art for porcelain and stained glass, decorated three major restaurants, painted murals, executed portrait commissions – whatever he was commissioned to do. American historical scenes, the personalities and artifacts of the Old West has fascinated him, but ships and sea remain his first love.
“There are probably more ships painted than any other subject,” he says, “and there are probably more inaccurately drawn ships, too. It is amazing how many otherwise fine painters fall apart when painting a ship.”
This is a book for those who cherish good maritime painting, and who like Jack Woodson can take delight in the sturdy bulk of a modern cargo ship as well as in lofty clipper ships and white sails. There are river packets, tugboats, crab boats, frigates, carriers, schooners, each captured in dazzling marine art.
About Jack Woodson
Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1913, Jack Woodson has lived there for 73 years. He began his career as an artist for Loew’s Theater, doing movie posters. As a free-lance artist he has been an illustrator for N.A.S.A., the National Park Service, the Mariner’s Museum, Like of Virginia, National Geographic, National Rifleman, the United States Historical Society, Dodd Mead, the U.S. Navy, Ethyl Corporation, and many other organizations. He has received numerous show awards and the National Industrial Arts Medal.