John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
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Keywords
OP.1420
Fishing Boats at Gloucester
ca. 1900
Oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (63.8 x 76.8 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of William T. Evans (1909.9.5)
Exhibitions
1910 National Gallery
National Gallery, Washington, D.C., Exhibition on the Opening of the Gallery in the New Building of the United States National Museum, March 16, 1910, no. 86, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
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. 6, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester, lent by Smithsonian Institution.
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. 87, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester, lent by the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1967 IBM Gallery
IBM Gallery, New York, Portrait of America: 1865–1915, January 16–February 25, 1967, no. 24, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
1987 Spanierman
Spanierman Gallery, New York, Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, May 12–June 13, 1987. (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Gerdts 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Hale 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Peters 1987), no. 1, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
2000 Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum, New York, American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000–2003, pp. 96–97 ill. in color, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester. Traveled to: Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, June 17–July 30, 2000; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, August 20–October 29, 2000; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, November 18, 2000–February 4, 2001; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey, March 4–May 20, 2001; Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, April 7–June 17, 2001; Portland Museum of Art, Maine, June 21–October 21, 2001; Worcester Art Museum, October 7, 2001–January 6, 2002; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, November 17, 2001–January 20, 2002.
Literature
Holmes 1926
Holmes, William H. Smithsonian Institution, The National Gallery of Art, Catalogue of Collections II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1926, p. 58, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Tucker 1931
Tucker, Allen. John H. Twachtman. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1931, pp. 46–47 ill. in b/w, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Time 1956
"The American Impressionists." Time (March 26, 1956), p. 86 ill. in color, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
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. 162, 243, 246 ill. (fig. 46), 247; vol. 2, p. 542 (catalogue A, no. 67), as Fishing Boats at Gloucester. (Hale concordance).
Truettner 1971
Truettner, William H. "William T. Evans, Collector of American Paintings." American Art Journal 3 (Fall 1971), 60 ill. in b/w, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Boyle 1974–I
Boyle, Richard. American Impressionism. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974, p. 168, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Boyle 1979
Boyle, Richard. John Twachtman. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979, pp. 80–81 ill. in color, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
National Museum of American Art 1983
National Museum of American Art. Descriptive Catalogue of Painting and Sculpture in the National Museum of American Art. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983, p. 196, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Kloss 1985
Kloss, William. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, pp. 216 ill. in b/w, 217, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Boyle 1987
Boyle, Richard J. "John Twachtman's Gloucester Years." In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery, 1987. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), p. 23, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Hale 1987
Hale, John Douglass. "Twachtman's Gloucester Period: A 'Clarifying Process.'" In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery, 1987. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), p. 12, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Peters 1987
Peters, Lisa N. "Catalogue." In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), pp. 50–51 ill. in color, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
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. 495; vol. 2, p. 996 ill. in b/w (fig. 496), as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
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), p. 158 ill. in b/w, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
May 2000–I
May, Stephen. "Expressing the Inexpressible." American Artist (February 2000), p. 25 ill. in color, as Fishing Boats at Gloucester.
Commentary

Fishing Boats at Gloucester is depicted in one of Twachtman’s charcoal sketches after the paintings he completed in the summer of 1900 in Gloucester (D.1417). He wrote on the verso of the drawing: “Looking on the decks of vessels. Grey and white.” As Hale points out, Twachtman's composition is reminiscent of Oyster Boats, Tenth Street Dock (OP.301), a New York harbor scene rendered in 1879, but his brushwork here is both more agile and assured and he used a broader chromatic range, giving definition to the shapes and contours of the near boats and the fishing sheds that recede along the wharf. 

It seems certain that Twachtman would have included this carefully rendered and large painting in one or more of his four 1901 solo shows. However, the original title of the work is unknown, and it therefore cannot be linked with any of the works exhibited.

In 1906, the painting was sold through Silas S. Dustin, who served as an agent for the Twachtman estate, to the prominent collector William T. Evans, who gave it three years later to its present collection.  

Selected Literature

From Hale 1957

Two works of similar subject matter that illustrate the difference between Twachtman’s oily and dry impasto are Oyster Boats [OP.301], 1879, and Fishing Boats at Gloucester, 1900. In the first painting one sees that the pigment stayed wet in the delineated foreground water during the painting of the picture. The dark strokes of the reflected masts of the boats are painted wet into wet, producing, in reproduction, almost the effect of watercolor. In Fishing Boats . . . the dragging brush strokes are evidenced by the raised edge of the wharf in the middle foreground, painted light over dark, as well as in the rigging lines from the masts, dark over light. That the wet into wet in Oyster Boats was not done to indicate the actual wetness of the pictured water, is apparent when the same technical phenomenon is observed on the canvas in the rendition of solid objects. And in the later work the canvas-roughened edges of the brush strokes were not the result of any technical affectation but, rather, of fast painting. This becomes clear as we notice that the dark edge of the stern of the foreground sloop is rough from a dry brush correction, light over dark, that was dashed in, whereas at the dark edges between the water and the sterns of the two craft this does not occur [pp. 243, 247].