John Henry Twachtman

John Henry Twachtman
Born: Cincinnati, Ohio 1853Died: Gloucester, Massachusetts 1902

“[H]is works demand your attention . . . a prolonged, close attention, for they do not give themselves to the first comer.” Art critic Charles de Kay, 1918, quoted in Peters, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, 1999

John Henry Twachtman was witty and irreverent, and he was known for playing practical jokes on unsuspecting friends. He was a waiflike figure who wore a long, thin mustache and a closely trimmed beard, and his student Violet Oakley remembered that his eyes were “often half hidden under a sort of tangle of fair hair.” (Peters, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, 1999) Twachtman was a force in the art world, founding an informal art school at Cos Cob, Connecticut, and teaching in New York. He spent most of his career painting the landscape of his Connecticut property in quiet scenes inspired by Japanese prints. In these intimate paintings he often placed the horizon line at the top of the canvas, giving the viewer a sense of being nestled in the landscape. (Pyne, “John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape,” in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989)

Biography

Painter, founding member of The Ten. He studied with Frank Duveneck, and his early canvases reflected the influence of the Munich Academy. The mature work showed a concern for light and subtle tonalities, expressed in poetic and monochromatic evocations of the landscape.

Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)

John Twachtman, the son of German immigrants, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had his first art training at the Ohio Mechanics Institute. In 1871 he enrolled in the McMicken School of Design where he studied with Frank Duveneck, who had just returned from several years of work in Munich. At Duveneck's urging Twachtman journeyed to Munich and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. There he readily acquired skills in modeling forms, dark tonality, and bravura brushwork. Armed with these skills he set out for Venice, seeking to apply them to the city's ambient light and air, but with mixed results.

In 1883 he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian and suffered a violent reaction against his brownish Munich training. Deeply impressed by the painting of Whistler and the impressionists, and encouraged by Theodore Robinson and Childe Hassam, he moved toward a lighter palette and a more abstract simplification of forms. During his years in France he produced the most popular and profitable work of his career. Prompted perhaps by Whistler's delicate and evocative Venetian pastels, Twachtman now reduced detail and with broad, flat planes of thinly washed grays and green produced magnificently simple and suggestive canvases such as Arques-la-Bataille (1885), now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Japanese influence beautifully proclaimed itself.

In 1887, Twachtman returned to America and settled in an old farmhouse surrounded by seventeen acres at Cos Cob, Connecticut. Nearby, his closest colleague and most intimate friend, J. Alden Weir, had just previously settled down. Though Twachtman enjoyed several warm friendships in the artistic community he was essentially a "loner," a moody man given to fits of depression and most at ease communing with nature. "To be isolated is a fine thing and we are then nearer to nature," he wrote. His friends called him a true Thoreauvian.

At his new home Twachtman found or fabricated natural forms, which he painted repeatedly and in all seasons. He preferred to paint close-ups, "bits" as he called them, rather than broad panoramic views. With high or no horizons these were often painted on square canvases, which stabilized the image by minimizing dynamic movement in any direction. Within these parameters his strong sense of design and feel for abstraction gave solid structure to his work. His brushwork now became more impressionist and better attuned to the atmospheric effect he desired.

He became most skilled at depicting winter scenes, studies in whiteness, more tonalist than impressionist. He loved the winter and "that feeling of quiet and all nature is hushed to silence." Modern realism, he complained, "consists too much of representation of things." On canvas, he reduced winter to its essentials enabling him to evoke the poetic, mystical mood of nature.

The appeal of these works proved elusive to the public and the paintings did not sell, and Twachtman became increasingly depressed and discouraged. Domestic difficulties had prompted a separation from his wife and children. In 1900 he was induced to venture his efforts in another direction. Gloucester, Massachusetts, offered a new and different subject to his brush. On the picturesque waterfront of New England's premier fishing town his work moved away from the dissolution of form seen in his Cos Cob paintings toward a much more objective rendering of concrete subject matter. The sinuous contours of brooks and snowdrifts were replaced by the geometric forms of docks and vessels. Angles replaced curves and structure became more explicit and central.

Sadly the rejuvenation proved brief. In August 1902 a ruptured appendix prematurely ended his life. His place among the Ten American Painters, which he had only recently joined, was assumed by William Merritt Chase.

Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)

End of Winterhttp://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24339
after 1889Twachtman drew inspiration from his seventeen acres of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his paintings of the property express the emotional and spiritual comfort he found there. This image describes the beginning of the seasonal transition from winter to spring. Twachtman depicted bare trees and an icy, swollen brook, but allowed the brown primed canvas to show through his thinly applied paint so that a feeling of warmth and regeneration could emerge. Twachtman created many images of streams and brooks, and these ceaselessly moving bodies of water might have held a deeper significance for him. By the time Twachtman painted his Connecticut landscapes, American artists and intellectuals had been interested in Buddhism for more than two decades, and the artist himself had studied Zen philosophy and Japanese art. (Pyne, "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape," in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989) This may account for the meditative quality of his pictures, the sense of looking not at an actual landscape, but at an inward image of something seen long before.****Hemlock Pool

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24344

ca. 1890-1900

22 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (56.5 x 76.7 cm) Remarks: Frame: 30 x 37 1/2 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.140
Smithsonian American Art Museum
oil on canvas
John Twachtman painted this scene in all different seasons. He drew inspiration from his seventeen acres of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his paintings of the property express the emotional and spiritual comfort he found there. This image, likely made in autumn, shows a pond located behind his house at the bottom of a steep incline along the Horseneck Brook. Twachtman created many images of streams and brooks, and these ceaselessly moving bodies of water might have held a deeper significance for him. By the time Twachtman painted his Connecticut landscapes, American artists and intellectuals had been interested in Buddhism for more than two decades, and the artist himself had studied Zen philosophy and Japanese art. (Pyne, "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape," in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989) This may account for the meditative quality of his pictures, the sense of looking not at an actual landscape, but at an inward image of something seen long before.
For more information about this work visit the Luce Foundation Center.
http://americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=990
audio commentary
http://americanart.si.edu/luce/media.cfm?key=372&artistmedia=0&object=990&subkey=1188

  Misty May Morn
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24346

1899

oil

25 1/8 x 30 in.

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly

Twachtman painted numerous views of the hemlock-lined pool on his Connecticut farm, capturing it at all times of day and in different seasons. Unlike other artists, Twachtman lived in the country year-round: “I feel more and more contented with the isolation of country life…we are nearer to nature—I can see how necessary it is to live always in the country.”

****Round Hill Road

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24350

about 1890–1900 oil 30 1/4 x 30 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans

“Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing. Everything is so quiet and the whole earth seems wrapped in a mantle,” according to John Henry Twachtman. He owned a small farmhouse and barn on Round Hill Road in Greenwich, Connecticut The Torrent http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24352 about 1900 oil 25 1/4 x 30 1/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans The view of Horseneck Falls behind his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, was one of John Henry Twachtman's favorite scenes, and he painted it time and again. When he first visited the spot in 1889 he exclaimed, “This is it!” and immediately purchased the seventeen-acre farm that would inspire his art for the rest of his life.

****Figure in Sunlight (Artist's Wife)
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24340
about 1890-1900
oil on canvas
26 1/8 x 21 1/4 in. (66.4 x 53.9 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.137

John Twachtman painted many portraits of his wife and children between 1889 and 1902. These were among the few figural works he made during a career devoted mostly to landscape painting. Twachtman did not believe in stiff, formal poses, and in this image he painted Martha seated comfortably in front of the family's small farmhouse.He had led a nomadic life before marrying and settling in Connecticut, and the soft,glowing colors of this scene convey the comfort of his new home and family. The blurred outlines and rich yellows and greens of the background evoke the warm, hazy atmosphere of a summer day.

****On the Terrace
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24348
about 1890-1900
oil on canvas
25 1/4 x 30 1/8 in. (64.1 x 76.5 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.14

John Henry Twachtman settled in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1889 and painted many images of his farm property. This springtime scene shows his wife, Martha, and their children on a terrace bordered by flowers and bathed in soft light. Martha rocks her newborn son while daughters Marjorie and Elsie play quietly by her side. Twachtman wanted the figures in his paintings to appear casual, and here the intimate group evokes a snapshot of family life rather than a formally posed portrait. The crisp white dresses echo the white flowers along the pathway and create an aura of innocence and purity around the young children and their mother.

John Henry Twachtman depicted his wife, Martha, and three of their children in the garden of their home in Greenwich, Connecticut. Dressed in white and bathed in sunlight, the figures suggest an idealized scene of domestic harmony amid the carefully tended flowers.

****Fishing Boats at Gloucester http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24341 1901 oil 25 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans

Painted a year before Twachtman's death, this work departs from the poetic mistiness that characterizes much of his earlier work. The bold brush strokes and strong horizontals, verticals, and diagonals provide a sense of structure that distinguishes this composition from the more decorative treatments of this picturesque coastal town favored by other artists. Also part of collection http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=24336

For a complete list of all Twachtman paintings at the Smithsonian:
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/results/?page=1&num=10&image=0&view=0&name=&title=&keywords=&type=&subject=&number=&id=4901