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

Catalogue Entry

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Keywords
OP.1169
Sea Scene
Alternate titles: Marine; The Sea
ca. 1893
Oil on canvas
28 x 34 1/8 in. (71.1 x 86.7 cm)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Special Purchase Fund, 1963 (1963-21)
Provenance
Henry Fitch Taylor, by 1909–as of 1915;
(Montross Gallery, New York);
to Mrs. John F. Braun, Philadelphia, ca. 1920s;
(Robert Carlin Galleries, Philadelphia);
to present collection, 1963.
Exhibitions
1913 Armory Show
69th Infantry Armory, New York, International Exhibition of Modern Art, Association of American Painters and Sculptors, February 15–March 15, 1913, no. 734, as The Sea, lent by William Macbeth, Esq.
1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Department of Fine Arts, San Francisco, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, February 20–December 4, 1915, no. 4067, as Marine, lent by Henry Fitch Taylor, Esq.
1983 Hudson River Museum
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York, The Book of Nature: The Natural Sublime in American Painting, October 27, 1983–January 4, 1984, no. 43, p. 58 ill. in b/w, as Sea Scene.
1985 Nassau County Museum of Fine Art
Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn, New York, The European Experience in the 19th Century, June 2–September 2, 1985, pp. 41 ill. in color, 94, as Sea Scene.
1990 Tampa Museum of Art
Tampa Museum of Art, Florida, At the Water's Edge, December 9, 1989–March 4, 1990, pp. 31, 73 ill. in b/w, as Sea Scene. Traveled to: Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida, May 4–June 17, 1990; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, November 8, 1990–January 6, 1991.
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. 27, as Sea Scene. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Literature
Huneker 1911
Huneker, James. New York Sun, January 22, 1911, as Sea Scene.
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. 2, p. 560 (catalogue A, no. 395), as Marine. (Hale concordance).
Hawkes 1975
Hawkes, Elizabeth H. American Painting and Sculpture: Delaware Art Museum. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1975, pp. 62–63 ill. in b/w, as Sea Scene.
Boyle 1979
Boyle, Richard. John Twachtman. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979, pp. 58–59 ill. in color, as Sea Scene.
Gerdts 1990–III
Gerdts, William H. "Surf and Shore: Nineteenth-Century Views of the Beach." In At the Water's Edge. Tampa: Tampa Museum of Art, 1990. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 31, 73 ill. in b/w, 125, as Sea Scene.
Weinberg, Bolger, and Curry 1994
Weinberg, H. Barbara, Doreen Bolger, and David Park Curry. American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 99 ill. in color, 100, as Sea Scene.
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. 497; vol. 2, p. 1013 ill. in b/w (fig. 514), as Sea Scene.
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. 113, 115 ill. in color, as Sea Scene.
Stoner 2008
Stoner, Joyce Hill. "Materials for Immateriality." In Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly, by Marc Simpson. Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008. Exhibition catalogue (2008 Clark Art Institute), p. 100 (fig. 41), detail, as Sea Scene.
Commentary

The view from a low angle directly into breaking waves against distant cliffs could have been influenced by Claude Monet’s 1883–86 scenes of the cliffs of Étretat; Monet's The Manneport (Étretat),1883 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) was probably exhibited in New York in 1886 and entered an American collection in 1899.[1]

This painting’s first known owner was Twachtman’s artist friend Henry Fitch Taylor (1853–1925). In 1911 the critic James Huneker remarked in the New York Sun: “Henry Fitch Taylor of the Madison Gallery is the proud possessor of two Twachtmanns. One is a seascape with a rocky shore, distinguished in tonalities and charged with melancholy poetry. Mr. Taylor will send it to the forthcoming exhibition at Rome.” The second Twachtman in Taylor’s collection was a Niagara scene. This painting was one of two works by Twachtman included in the 1913 Armory Show. The other work shown was Hemlock Pool (OP.1113). 

[1] The Metropolitan website indicates that the painting was possibly exhibited in New York at the American Art Association (Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris), April 10–28, 1886, no. 123 and the National Academy of Design (Works in Oil and Pastel by the Impressionists of Paris), May 25–June 30, 1886, no. 123, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438823, accessed July 7, 2016.

Selected Literature

From Weinberg, Bolger, and Curry 1994

Coastal imagery in which the sea dominates, compositionally or psychologically, was of limited interest to the American Impressionists, who only occasionally recorded nature’s awesome power. Unlike Homer, the American Impressionists generally preferred to depict poetic vignettes of nature or people’s pleasure and recreation at the seashore, to produce what may be called shorescapes rather than coastal or marine views. There are, nevertheless, a few turbulent American Impressionist coast scenes. For example, in Twachtman’s Sea Scene (fig. 85) the viewer has no footing at all onshore but is asked to hover over rocks and a treacherous maelstrom of foaming breakers that occupy not only the foreground but also more than three-quarters of the canvas. However, the overall effect is literally and psychologically lightened by the Impressionist palette and frothy stroke, and we tend to see nature through Twachtman’s lens as susceptible to decorative distillation rather than as threatening, as Homer would have us see it [pp. 99–100].