Woodland Valley has long been home to many painters, photographers, writers and other artistic people. One of the painters who spent their summers here in the late 1800's and early 1900's was Thomas Bigelow Craig.
Thomas Craig was a late-nineteenth century painter best known for his pastoral scenes of cows grazing at pasture. With their vivid light, lush meadows, and placid streams, Craig’s landscapes evoke an idyllic calm. Craig was largely self taught. He was born in Philadelphia, briefly studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and was active in the Philadelphia Sketch Club with Thomas Eakins. He listed his residence as Philadelphia from 1879 to 1888, after which he moved to New York City for nine years, and then to a suburb of Rutherford, NJ from 1899 on. He died in 1924 at his summer residence here in Woodland Valley (Ed's Twerdak's house on the hill before Fawn Hill Bridge). I believe that he married one of the Botchford relatives. (I would be grateful to any valley historians who want to fill in this part of the story.)
His paintings were featured at the National Academy of Design for forty-five years. He also exhibited at the Boston Art Club, the Brooklyn Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago (1893), and was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Artists Fund Society and the Chicago Watercolor Club. Today, his work is in the Butler Institute of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
