The Gift Of A Gallery - THE T.W. WOOD ART GALLERY IS DEDICATED TO MAKING ART ACCESSIBLE TO ALL
05/16/2025 05:59PM ● By PAUL HELLER
No one would have guessed that Thomas Waterman Wood, the son of a humble cabinetmaker, would one day gift his hometown of Montpelier with a museum dedicated to preserving and exhibiting historic and contemporary art, offer life-affirming art education to all ages, and collaborate within the community to ensure art is available to everyone.
MONTPELIER’S FAVORITE SON
Born in Montpelier on November 12, 1823, Thomas Wood began his artistic career in the mid-1830s, a career that would lead him to head two hallowed art institutions, the National Academy and the American Watercolor Society.
Montpelier 1855, oil on
canvas, 1855. For years, Wood worked as an itinerant painter, wandering around Vermont, New Hampshire, and southeastern Canada. In September 1850, he married Minerva Robinson of Waterbury and built a home for himself and his wife in Montpelier.
VISIT THE EXHIBITS
T.W. Wood Gallery, a museum of American art, was conceived as an institution that would bring the transformative power of art to the people. It contains several galleries:
The Wood Room Gallery—This gallery features the portraits and genre painting of T.W. Wood and the paintings of other 19th-century artists.
Vermont’s Federal Works Progress Administration Art—This gallery is the sole repository for the State of Vermont for the WPA artwork that employed many out-of- work artists during the Great Depression.
Contemporary Hall and Nuquist Gallery— These galleries feature rotating exhibitions by different groups and artists.The gallery also hosts kids’ programs, hands-on workshops, drink & draw events, and costume murder mystery fundraisers.
WOOD'S GENRE PAINTINGS DEPICT EVERYDAY LIFE
In the late 1850s, Wood stayed busy painting portraits, but also did some genre paintings, which captured ordinary people living their everyday lives, and he increasingly focused on African American subjects, one of the first white American painters to do so.
It was a later painting, American Citizens (To The Polls), that introduced the nobility of suffrage for the emancipation of enslaved people. The remarkable watercolor from 1867 is a character study of four men of different demographic types, standing in line to cast their votes. The three white men look bored, while the one Black man is excited about what is undoubtedly his first election.
The Wood Room at the T.W. Wood Gallery.
In the Jelly Jar, oil on canvas, 1880
Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 1885.CREATING SLY COMMENTARY
Wood’s 1878 painting The Quack Doctor depicts an early medicine show at the intersection of Main and East State streets in Montpelier. In Wood’s painting, the “doctor” is pitching his elixir to the assembled throng, while an exotic Turk is standing at the rear of the wagon, ready to deliver bottles of the “medicine” to the attentive buyers. A parade of ducks under the wagon is a sly commentary 0 on the quack cure being peddled.
The Quack Doctor, oil on canvas, 1882.FOR MORE INFORMATION
To find out more about the gallery and review its schedule of events, go to www.twwoodgallery.org. The museum is open from 12pm-4pm, Tuesday through Saturday.
Locally made soaps and other
artisan crafts, along with reproductions of the
artist's work, are for sale in the T.W. Wood Gallery's
gift shop. PHOTOS COURTESY OF T.W. WOOD GALLERY
