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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Low Tide: A Stranded Vessel, ca. 1881 (D.651). Fig. 1. The Zattere, Venice, showing Ponte Longo and the Church of the Gesuti beyond it, 2015.
Fig. 1. The Zattere, Venice, showing Ponte Longo and the Church of the Gesuti beyond it, 2015.
Low Tide: A Stranded Vessel, ca. 1881 (D.651). Fig. 2. Otto Bacher, View in Venice (Fondamenta della Zattere), Sylvester Rosa Koehler, "Mr. Bacher's Etchings," American Art Review 2 (October 1881), p. 230.
Fig. 2. Otto Bacher, View in Venice (Fondamenta della Zattere), Sylvester Rosa Koehler, "Mr. Bacher's Etchings," American Art Review 2 (October 1881), p. 230.
Related Work
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Keywords
D.651
Low Tide: A Stranded Vessel
Alternate title: Sketch: A Canal
ca. 1881
Graphite with pastel on laid paper
9 9/16 x 13 3/4 in. (24.2 x 35 cm)
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Andrew Carnegie Fund (06.25.1)
Exhibitions
1945 Lyman Allyn Museum
Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut, Work in Many Media by Men of the Tile Club, March 11–April 23, 1945, no. 157, as Sketch: A Canal.
Literature
Carnegie Institute 1912
Carnegie Institute. Lists of Paintings, Drawings, and Japanese Prints in the Permanent Collections of the Department of Fine Arts. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, 1912, n. p. (no. 143).
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. 593 (catalogue A, no. 1046), as Low Tide: A Stranded Vessel. (Hale concordance).
Commentary

This drawing of Venice depicts the same subject as the etching Venice (E.201), which shows the scene in reverse. The artist's viewpoint is looking eastward along the Zattere with the Church of the Gesuati in the far left and the Ponte Longo, a bridge over the San Trovaso Canal, in the left foreground (fig. 1). The large schooner in the right middleground is perhaps on a tilt for cleaning purposes or has fallen into this position due to low tide. Its masts point in the direction of the church.

Although Twachtman rendered the scene with a light touch, many details within it emerge and are well enunciated, such as the gondola's upturned prow, seen head on, the rigging on the tilted ship, and light and shadow across the surface of the water. A bulkhead, at the work's center, demonstrates Twachtman's use of this motif as an indication of where his eye fell within Venetian scenes, while creating a point of linkage among them. 

The work was probably rendered late in 1881, when Twachtman and his wife Martha ended their honeymoon in Venice. Twachtman's friend Otto Bacher featured the same site in his etching, Fondamenta delle Zattere, 1880 (fig 2), where the boats are all upright.