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.1204
Niagara Falls
Alternate title: Niagara
ca. 1894
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 1/8 in. (76.2 x 63.8 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of John Gellatly (1929.6.142)
Exhibitions
1913 New York School of Applied Design for Women probably
New York School of Applied Design for Women, Fifty Paintings by the Late John H. Twachtman, January 15–February 15, 1913, no. 6, as Niagara.
1928 Milch
Milch Galleries, New York, An Important Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, March 12–24, 1928, no. 8, as Niagara.
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. 65, as Niagara Falls, lent by the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1983 Nassau County Museum of Fine Art
Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn, New York, William Cullen Bryant, The Weirs and American Impressionism, April 24–July 31, 1983, no. 57, p. 60 ill. in b/w, as Niagara Falls.
1985 Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Niagara: Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697–1901, September 21–November 24, 1985, no. 157, pp. 74–75 ill. in color, as Niagara. Traveled to: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, July 13–September 1, 1985; New-York Historical Society, January 27–April 27, 1986.
Literature
Milch Gallery 1928
Milch Gallery Art Notes (Season, 1928–29). New York: E & A Milch, 1928, p. 12 ill. in b/w, as Niagara Falls.
Art News 1928–II
Art News 26 (March 10, 1928), p. 14 ill. in b/w, as Niagara.
Smith, S. C. Kaines 1932
Smith, S. C. Kaines. An Outline of Modern Painting in Europe and America. London: Medici Society, 1932, p. 149, as Niagara Falls.
Smithsonian Institution 1933
Smithsonian Institution. Catalogue of American and European Paintings in the Gellatly Collection. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1933, p. 18, as Niagara Falls.
Smithsonian Institution 1954
Smithsonian Institution. Catalogue of American and European Paintings in the Gellatly Collection. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1954, p. 16, as Niagara Falls.
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. 561 (catalogue A, no. 439), as Niagara Falls. (Hale concordance).
Boyle 1979
Boyle, Richard. John Twachtman. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979, pp. 60–61 ill. in color, as Niagara Falls.
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 Niagara Falls.
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 Niagara Falls.
McKinsey 1985
McKinsey, Elizabeth. Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 269–70, following p. 188 ill. in color, as Niagara Falls.
Peters 1989–I
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), p. 32 ill. in b/w, as Niagara Falls.
Prebus 1994
Prebus, Cynthia H. "Transitions in American Art and Criticism: The Formative Years of Early American Modernism, 1895–1905," Ph.D dissertation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, The State University, 1994, pp. 260, 269, 479 ill. in b/w, as Niagara Falls.
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, p. 63 ill. in b/w, as Niagara Falls.
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, 363; vol. 2, p. 903 ill. in b/w (fig. 389), as Niagara Falls.
Peters 2024
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman: An American Impressionist's Yellowstone." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 74 (Autumn 2024), pp. 6, 9 ill. in color.
Commentary

Of Twachtman’s two trips to Niagara (winter of 1893–94 and summer of 1894), this view of the falls clearly belongs to the latter. In it, he conveyed the sunlit warmth and the fullness and velocity of the water, which both falls downward and splashes upward with spray and foam. At the right is the profile of Table Rock on the Canadian side of the Niagara Falls, which seems larger in scale than the falls themselves, while streams of water falling from the table’s top intersect with the solid curtain of water beyond. In his vertical orientation and careful placement of shapes in relation to the picture plane, Twachtman could have had the waterfalls in the woodblock prints of Hiroshige in mind, such as Yôrô Waterfall, from the series Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces [of Japan], 1853. 

It was Twachtman’s custom in Niagara to create two views of a scene at different times of day in canvases of equivalent size, and the painting that corresponds with this work is Niagara Falls (OP.1205), which he seems to have left unfinished. The proportions of OP.1205 are close to square, whereas here the artist may have cut down this canvas to a vertical format, creating a more dynamic sense of movement, expressive of the vitality of summer.

This painting remained in Twachtman’s estate after his death but was not in his 1903 estate sale. Martha Twachtman finally parted with the canvas in 1928, when it sold from an exhibition of Twachtman’s work at Milch Galleries to the noted collector John Gellatly, who gave it along with many other works from his collection to the Smithsonian in the following  year.