Catalogue Entry
In his Niagara scenes, Twachtman tended to depict the same scene twice, at different times of day, capturing changes in light, atmosphere, and form that occurred over time. This painting is thus the afternoon version of the scene he rendered in Niagara in Winter (OP.1200), probably a late morning view, where the direct sunlight reflects off of the ice in the foreground, infusing the chilled mists and spray at the base of the partially frozen falls. The images are on canvases of roughly the same size and both depict Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but the two works are quite different. Niagara in Winter is more dynamic, conveying the way that the sun had a softening and glowing impact as if to loosen the grip of winter on the falls. Here, as the daylight begins to fade, the ice seems harder in the foreground and the falls more inert.
In the 1894 spring annual of the National Academy of Design, it was undoubtedly this painting that Twachtman exhibited as Horseshoe Falls, Niagara—Afternoon. Described by the critics as a winter scene, the work could only have been either this work or Niagara in Winter, but the “Afternoon” in the title narrows it down to being this painting that was featured. Several reviewers took notice of it. A critic for the New York Evening Post wrote that Twachtman had shown “a view of Niagara that has a feeling of the rush of the cataract about it, and is, in addition, distinguished and individual in color.” The reviewer for the New York Times stated: “Among the landscapes that catch the eye on a second round of the Academy exhibition is the ‘Niagara in Winter’ by John H. Twachtman, a partial view of the Horseshoe taken in the afternoon. It rivals in beauty and delicate touch his ‘Winter,’ at the society’s show.” A writer named Samuel M. Comstock reported in the Hartford Courant: "J. H. Twachtman is known as an impressionist, whose work at times is a little vague, but if his 'Horseshoe Falls—Niagara" is a good sample of impressionistic work, we say, let us have more of it. The purity of tone with which he has treated the falls, the snow covered foreground, the dying spray, make an exceedingly restful thing for the eye, in connection with the beauty of line wherewith the picture is treated."
The painting appears to have remained in the artist's estate, and it was probably Martha Twachtman who lent it to the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 with the title of Niagara, where it hung in the room devoted to Twachtman's work (Gallery 93), perhaps next to Niagara in Winter.
- Museum website (parrishart.org)