A Basket of Chips: An Autobiography

Basket of Chips, page 146

A Basket of Chips And things I know so well. Yes, now his love seems soft And szl#ant as moving clotids And bedrs me ozltward into pea-e. . . And now his voice, Gentle AS spring freighted winds Murmurs to me of rest . . . And so I listen , . . listen . . . And so I drift away , . . And find release Apinst his breast. , . . Ruth Hurwood? 24 The Harwood painting coming nearest to a visual equivalent for the mood of this poem is probably the modified Home Life, originally painted in 1895. Ione Harwood stated that Ruth Harwood suggested the veiled or halo effect in this portrait around the head of the figure of Harriet Harwood. J. `I'. Harwood painted it in years after. lone Harwood Interview, 30 August 1982, and Willard R. Harwood, William R. South, and Dennis Fowler Interviews, 23, 31, August 1982. Harwood's daughter Ruth wrote "Though his summers were heavy with farm work, he was still able to carry on his own painting projects," and "he did many landscapes during these years as well as figure compositions posed for by his children." One of these, an oil called ATZ Interesting Story, he gave to the Springville Collection in 1913. The following year he painted Ruth as a rather idealized, "Pre-Raphaelite"- like young woman standing and reading a poem within an only partially enclosed setting characterized by flowers sweetly in bloom. That painting titled Poetry Interlude, has very much the feeling of a Victorian father's last wistful look at a beloved daughter soon and inevitably to enter a life less closely connected to his. Hn~wood Art Exhibiborz, 6. 146