loading loading
John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Additional Images
The Inlet, ca. 1881 (OP.615). OP.615, The Inlet, detail with signature.
OP.615, The Inlet, detail with signature.
Keywords
OP.615
The Inlet
ca. 1881
Oil on canvas
14 x 19 5/8 in. (35.6 x 49.8 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Gift of an Anonymous Donor (1928.54)
Provenance
Ralph Cudney, Chicago;
(W. J. Parker, until 1924);
to (Vose, 1924);
to (Macbeth, 1928);
to Thomas Cochran, New York, 1928;
to present collection, 1928.
Exhibitions
1939 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, Presenting the Work of John H. Twachtman, American Painter, November 5–28, 1939, no. 1, as The Inlet, incorrectly identified as a watercolor.
1947 Lyman Allyn Museum
Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut, Eighty Eminent Painters of Connecticut, March 9–April 20, 1947, no. 122, as The Inlet.
1948 Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Coast and the Sea: A Survey of American Marine Painting, November 19, 1948–January 16, 1949, no. 117, as The Inlet.
1951 Birmingham Museum of Art
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, Opening Exhibition, April 8–June 3, 1951, p. 56, as The Inlet.
1966 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 14, as The Inlet, lent by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts.
1968 Spanierman
Ira Spanierman, New York, John Henry Twachtman, 1853–1902: An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels, February 3–24, 1968, no. 5, n.p. ill. in b/w, as The Inlet, lent by the Addison Gallery of American Art.
1970 Hathorn Gallery
Hathorn Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, Some Quietist Painters: A Trend Toward Minimalism in Late Nineteenth-Century American Painting, April 8–29, 1970, no. 25, as The Inlet.
1981 Addison Gallery
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, American Impressionism, February 13–March 8, 1981, as The Inlet.
1982 Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C., The Hague School and Its American Legacy, April 19–June 11, 1982, no. 19, as The Inlet. Traveled to: Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1982.
1985 Danforth Museum of Art
Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, Massachusetts, The Ten American Painters: An Impressionist Tradition, May 5–June 30, 1985, as The Inlet.
1999 High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, February 26–May 21, 2000. (Peters 1999–I), no. 4, as The Inlet. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Literature
Burroughs 1936
Burroughs, Alan. Limners and Likenesses: Three Centuries of American Painting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936, p. 152 ill. in b/w, as The Inlet.
Hale 1957
Hale, John Douglass. "Life and Creative Development of John H. Twachtman." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1957. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1958, vol. 1, pp. 189–90, 192 ill. in b/w (fig. 22); vol. 2, p. 557 (catalogue A, no. 323), as The Inlet. (Hale concordance).
Boyle 1978
Boyle, Richard J. "John H. Twachtman: An Appreciation." American Art & Antiques 1 (November–December 1978), p. 75 ill. in color.
Peters 1995
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman (1853–1902) and the American Scene in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Frontier within the Terrain of the Familiar." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1995. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1996, vol. 1, p. 143; vol. 2, p. 655 ill. in b/w (fig. 107), as The Inlet.
Faxon, Berman, and Reynolds 1996
Faxon, Susan C., Avis Berman, and Jock Reynolds. Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years—A Selective Catalogue. Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, 1996, p. 31, as The Inlet.
Peters 1999–I
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 49–50 ill. in color, as The Inlet.
Commentary

The Inlet exemplifies the new emphasis on atmospheric light in Twachtman's art during his 1881 honeymoon in Holland. His method of using underpainting and glazing to create luminosity was influenced by his exposure to the art of the Hague school. Here he adopted the golden tonalities, also present in Hague school works by artists such as Anton Mauve (who he sought out for painting criticism) and Jacob Maris to create a unifying effect. His viewpoint, as in many of his Dutch works, was from a low angle looking across a flat landscape in which he was able to see far into the distance. He expressed this experience by guiding the viewer's eye from a rowboat on the near shore, to another vessel, farther out on the water, and from there to a windmill in the left distance. A sliver of blue indicates the presence of the sea at the horizon line. In the sky, Twachtman used soft, horizontal brushstrokes to create a feeling of openness.  

This painting was once part of the collection of American paintings belonging to the noted Chicago collector Ralph Cudney (1907–1935). It was purchased from Macbeth Gallery in 1928 by Thomas Cochran (1871–1936), a banker who founded the Addison Gallery of American Art at his alma mater of Philips Andover in 1931. It entered the collection in the year Cochran purchased it, three years before the museum formally opened.

Selected Literature

From Hale 1957

In Inlet (fig. 22), painted in 1881, the windmill in the left background duplicates the position and function of the house in Landscape [OP.514], but the effect is slightly weakened by the presence in the right foreground of the rowboat, apparently introduced to insure the composition's success, much as Whistler introduced the figure in his Thames on Ice.

From Peters 1995

The influence of the Hague School is suggested in Twachtman's 1881 Dutch scenes in his new attention to subtleties of atmosphere and his expression of quiet and at times melancholy moods in nature. In The Inlet, he depicts an open marsh, conveying the feeling of damp ground and misty air by applying his paint loosely across the surface of the work in related tones of yellow, beige, and white (fig. 107). This soft layering of pigments seems to merge ground and atmosphere, expressing an overall unity in nature. The flat, unvarying countryside is broken only by a deserted boat on a shallow stream in the right middleground and a lone windmill situated in a grove of trees in the left distance. Hague School artists similarly emphasized isolated motifs in flat, undramatic landscapes, and an affinity between Twachtman's Inlet and Hague School artist Paul Gabriël's view of a tranquil riverscape occupied by a single sailboat may be noted (fig. 108 [Paul Gabriël, Een Vaart Bij Kortenhoef, oil on canvas, 53.2 x 83 centimeters, Museum Mesdag, The Hague] [p. 143].