Catalogue Entry
In Venice, Twachtman often left the city's tourist areas behind to explore the "real" Venice, where everyday life took place. In 1880, Whistler would describe this aspect of the city as "a Venice in Venice that . . . others never seem to have perceived."[1] Twachtman was one who did appreciate it, and he did so a year before Whistler visited the city. His subject here is an open green expanse with a line of houses at the right and the city in the distance. The glowing evening light in the building facades implies that Twachtman's view was toward the west.
He used an alla prima techique in the work, painting it probably in one session with calligraphic strokes for bare tree branches and short Impressionist dabs of paint for distant figures. He conveyed his own presence in the landscape in his eye-level vantage point along a path, cropped in the foreground, that recedes gradually under the trees. At the right side of the path is the inconspicuous presence of a figure in a long dark coat with his back to the viewer, who is likely to be a monk.
The site is unidentified but it might be San Lazzaro degli Armeni, a small island at the western side of the Venetian Lagoon that was and is home to the monastery of an Armenian Catholic congregation. The island was visited often by artists, writers (including Lord Byron in 1816–17), and leaders in politics and religion. An image of the island with trees similar to those featured by Twachtman was reproduced in the article on Venice by Henry James, published in Century magazine in November 1882.[2]
The painting's first owner was Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842–1904), an artist and writer, who bequeathed the painting to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[1] Whistler to Marcus Bourne Huish, Fine Arts Society, London, in reply to a letter dated January 14, 1880, Whistler Collection, Special Collections Department, Glasgow University Library, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
[2] Henry James Jr., "Venice," Century 25 (November 1882), p. 18.
From Clark 1924
Twachtman showed some of his early canvases later in life and alluded to them as being “black as your hat.” The Boston museum has an example, entitled “Italian [sic] Landscape,” dated Venice '78. Although painted in sunlight as indicated by the shadows, it is dark in key and brown in tone. The technique is spirited and facile, following the Munich formula.
From Hale 1957
[Comparing this painting with Frank Duveneck's Old Town Brook, Polling, Bavaria (ca. 1878, Cincinnati Art Museum), Hale stated]: Twachtman's more direct painting allows us to enter his scene and walk down the tree-lined vista to the white building at its termination, albeit the structure is only a blob of pigment. In spite of the presence of a little more actual detail in the Duveneck work one does not mentally row up the brook in his picture. The forcing of the values of the water from almost full light to nearly full dark is too disturbing to allow for anything so commonplace. Viewed realistically, the water might be thought to be boiling in places. We are prevented from doing more than admire a virtuosity which in an actor would come close to evoking the word “ham!” Whether it was Twachtman's inability to handle the brush with Duveneck's dexterity that gives the former's work its look of greater sincerity or whether it was due to an innate feeling of restraint on his part is a moot point. But from what we know of personal sensitivity and the quiet tone that his work was to show later, we may feel reasonably sure that it was the risk of over-display that was the more important factor in restraining him [vol. 1, pp. 176–77].
- Museum website (collections.mfa.org)