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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Catalogue Entry

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Keywords
OP.954
Shadows on Snow
Alternate titles: Snow; Snow Scene
ca. 1894–95
Oil on canvas
26 x 32 in. (66 x 81.3 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman
Private collection
Exhibitions
1941 Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, Painting Today and Yesterday in the United States, June 5–September 1, 1941, no. 125, as Snow Scene.
Literature
American Art Association 1895 probably
Auction catalogue, April 25–26, 1895. New York: American Art Association, 1895, lot 81, as Shadows on Snow, 26 x 32 in.
Collector 1895 probably
"The American Art Association Sale." Collector 6 (May 1, 1895), p. 214, as Shadows on Snow, 26 x 32 in.
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. 569 (catalogue A, no. 549), as Snow. (Hale concordance).
Sotheby's New York 2011
American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. Auction catalogue, May 19, 2011. New York: Sotheby's, 2011, lot 18 ill. in color, as Snow.
Sotheby's New York 2013–I
American Art. Auction catalogue, May 22, 2013. New York: Sotheby's, 2013, lot 43 ill. in color, as Snow.
Commentary

Known as Snow from the mid-twentieth century until 2021, this painting's title has been changed to Shadows on Snow, due to the discovery that it is very likely to be the work with this title included in an auction at the American Art Association, held April 25–26, 1895. Its measurements—26 x 32 inches—listed in a report of the sale in Collector magazine, match those of this work; no other snow scene by the artist with these dimensions is known. According to the records of the American Art Association, the painting sold to Louis Ettlinger (1846-1927) for $120. Ettlinger was a prominent figure in the field of lithographic printing and an avid horticulturist.[1] (The painting was not included in the 1906 exhibition of Ettlinger's collection at the Lotos Club, 1906–I Lotos Club). Shadows on Snow is also a title appropriate to the painting, which is among Twachtman’s winter views created, in all likelihood, from his studio on the second floor of his Greenwich home, looking north over the top of the root cellar to the family barn.

Twachtman conveyed the day's chill in the snow-covered ground across which the shadows of clouds seem more present than in the sky. Spanning three-quarters of the canvas, the drifts of snow form a curved contour in the foreground that blends into the hill at the left. Into it, the geometric shapes of the architectural structures appear carved and barricaded against the hardened, light-absorbent ground cover, while a dense atmosphere suffuses the scene. 

In the first decade of the twentieth century this painting belonged to the diplomat Robert Woods Bliss (1875–1962), who donated it in 1941, along with his Georgian estate in Washington, D.C. (Dumbarton Oaks) and the large collection he had amassed with his wife Mildred, to Harvard University. (Bliss was the cofounder of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.)

[1] Ettlinger was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1866, settling in New York. There he established the lithographic firm of Schumacher and Ettlinger, which became the American Lithographic Company in 1892.  He later was director of the Crowell Publishing Company, which produced Collier’s Weekly, Woman’s Home Companion, American Magazine, Farm and Fireside, and The Mentor.  He was also chairman of the board of the Persian Rug Manufactory.  After purchasing Boscobel, the Henry Ward Beecher estate in Peekskill, New York, Ettlinger continued the preacher’s work of transplanting and cultivating trees from foreign countries. Elliott  Daingerfield was among the pallbearers at his funeral in 1927.