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John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society

Catalogue Entry

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Additional Images
Waterfall in Yellowstone, ca. 1895 (OP.1302). Fig. 1. Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, approximately from Inspiration Point, June 2022
Fig. 1. Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, approximately from Inspiration Point, June 2022
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.1302
Waterfall in Yellowstone
Alternate titles: Falls, Yellowstone Park; Waterfall, Yellowstone; Waterfall, Yellowstone Series
ca. 1895
Oil on canvas
25 3/8 x 16 1/2 in. (64.4 x 41.9 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Whitney Western Art Museum, Cody, Wyoming, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney (22.69)
Provenance
(American Art Galleries, New York, Twachtman estate sale, no. 19);
to Edward A. Rorke, Brooklyn;
Philip J. Gentner, Worcester, Massachusetts;
to (Macbeth, 1925);
to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1931;
to (Knoedler, by 1957);
Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney;
gift to present collection, 1969.
Exhibitions
1903–I American Art Galleries
American Art Galleries, New York, Sale of the Work of the Late John H. Twachtman, exhibition and auction, March 19–24, 1903, no. 19, as Waterfall, Yellowstone Series.
1932 Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Summer Exhibition Commencing May Third Nineteen-Thirty-Two. A Selection of Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from the Permanent Collection, Summer 1932, no. 75, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
1935 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Exhibition of American Painting, June 7–July 7, 1935, no. 224, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
1937 Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Leaders of American Impressionism: Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John H. Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir, October 17–November 28, 1937, no. 63, as Waterfall in Yellowstone, lent by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
1938 Springfield Museum of Fine Art
Springfield Museum of Fine Art, Massachusetts, A Century of American Landscape Painting, March 8–28, 1938, no. 59, as Waterfall in Yellowstone, lent by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
1939 Carnegie Institute
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, A Century of American Landscape Painting, March 22–April 30, 1939, no. 64, as Waterfall in Yellowstone, lent by Whitney Museum of American Art.
1984 Madison Art Center
Madison Art Center, Wisconsin, The Seasons: American Impressionist Painting, December 8, 1984–January 3, 1985, no. 53, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
1986 Art Gallery of Western Australia
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, America: Art and the West, December 11, 1986–January 21, 1987, no. 33, as Waterfall in Yellowstone. Traveled to: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, February 5–April 5, 1987.
Literature
Sun 1903–II
"Twachtman Pictures, $16,610." Sun (New York), March 25, 1903, p. 5, as Waterfall, Yellowstone Series.
Tucker 1931
Tucker, Allen. John H. Twachtman. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1931, pp. 20–21 ill. in b/w, as Falls, Yellowstone Park.
Whitney Museum of American Art 1931
Whitney Museum of American Art, Catalogue of the Collection. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1931, p. 37, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
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. 581 (catalogue A, no. 779), as Waterfall, Yellowstone. (Hale concordance).
Trenton and Hassrick 1983
Trenton, Patricia, and Peter Hassrick. The Rocky Mountains: A Vision for Artists in the Nineteenth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1983, pp. 33, 38 ill. in b/w, 40, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
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, p. 373; vol. 2, p. 916 ill. in b/w (fig. 402), as Waterfall, Yellowstone.
Hassrick 2015
Hassrick, Peter H. Drawn to Yellowstone: Artists in America's First National Park. Cody, Wyoming: Buffalo Bill Center of the West, 2015, as Waterfall in Yellowstone, pp. 104 ill. in color, 105.
Peters 2024
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman: An American Impressionist's Yellowstone." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 74 (Autumn 2024), cover ill. in color, p. 20, as Waterfall in Yellowstone.
Commentary

When Twachtman exhibited two Yellowstone paintings at the Society of American Artists in 1896, a critic for the New York Evening Post wrote: “Mr. Twachtman has recently rediscovered the Yellowstone and one of his pictures (no. 158) gives us some idea of how that country looks to the eye of a modern painter. It is very charming in color, as is his second picture (no. 180) in the slip and fall of the water.”[1] This was perhaps the work to which the critic referred, which was titled Water-Falls in the show. The work features the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from near Lookout Point (fig. 1). Using a vertical composition to draw the viewer's eye upward across the surface from the river through the falls, Twachtman exemplifies what another reviewer of the exhibition felt revealed the artist’s promise of some day using Impressionism for a poetic purpose.[2]

This painting sold from the artist’s 1903 estate sale to the Brooklyn artist Edward A. Rorke (1856–1905), a painter of genre scenes and landscapes who purchased ten works by Twachtman from the sale. The painting belonged to the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1931 to 1957.

[1] New York Evening Post 1896.

[2] New York Tribune 1896.