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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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Keywords
OP.909
Snowbound
ca. 1892–94
Oil on canvas
22 x 30 1/8 in. (55.9 x 76.5 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, California, Young Collection, 1946, Gift of General and Mrs. Edward Clinton Young (YO63)
Provenance
Henry Smith, New York;
to (Milch, 1922);
John K. Newman;
to (American Art Association—Anderson Galleries, New York, Newman sale, November 30, 1935, lot 15);
to General Edward Clinton Young;
gift to present collection, 1946.
Exhibitions
1897 Cincinnati Art Museum probably
Cincinnati Art Museum, Spring Exhibition of Works by American Artists, May 22–July 5, 1897, no. 35, as Snowbound.
1930 Century Club
Century Club, New York, World's Fair Exhibition, 1930, as Snowbound.
1946 Scripps College
Scripps College, Claremont, California, American Paintings, 1870–1930, from the Collection of General and Mrs. Edward Clinton Young, March 1946, no. 51, as Snowbound.
1966 Montgomery Gallery
Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College, Claremont, California, Impressionism, November 2–December 4, 1966, as Snowbound.
1970 Peppers Art Gallery
Peppers Art Gallery, New York, American Painting, April 1–May 3, 1970, as Snowbound.
1973 San Diego Museum of Art
San Diego Museum of Art, The Young Collection, December 7, 1973–January 20, 1974, as Snowbound.
1974 Fred P. Giles Gallery
Fred P. Giles Gallery, Richmond, Kentucky, Centennial Exhibition: A Century of American Paintings, January 13–February 8, 1974, as Snowbound.
1975 San Jose Museum of Art
San Jose Museum of Art, California, Americans Abroad: Painters of the Victorian Era, December 5, 1975–January 10, 1976, as Snowbound.
1984 Tucson Museum of Art
Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona, American Reflections: Paintings 1830–1940: From the Collections of Pomona College and Scripps College, Claremont, California, December 15, 1984–December 13, 1985, pp. 54–55 ill. in b/w, as Snowbound. Traveled to: Tyler Museum of Art, Texas, March 2–April 14, 1985; Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, California, May 5–June 16, 1985; Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Iowa, July 14–August 25, 1985; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, September 15, 1985–February 27, 1986; Meadows Museum, Shreveport, Louisiana, March 15–April 25, 1986; Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, New York, May 17–June 28, 1986; Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, Alaska, September 6–October 18, 1986; Beaumont Art Museum, Texas, November 14–December 28, 1986; Galleries of The Claremont Colleges, California, 1987.
1988 Nationalgalerie (Berlin)
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Bilder aus der Neuen Welt: Amerikanische Malerei des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts; Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza und Museen der Vereinigten Staaten, November 22, 1988–February 5, 1989, as Snowbound. Traveled to: Kunsthaus Zurich, March 3–May 15, 1989.
1999 Laguna Art Museum
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, Colonies of American Impressionism: Cos Cob, Old Lyme, Shinnecock, and Laguna Beach, January 9–April 11, 1999, no. 54, pp. 57, 118, ill. in color, 141, as Snowbound.
2001 National Academy of Design
National Academy of Design, New York, The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore, February 13–May 13, 2001. (Larkin 2001–I). Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 17–September 16, 2001; Denver Art Museum, October 27, 2001–January 20, 2002.
Literature
Hall 1897 probably
Hall, H. Eugene. "Some of the Striking Things at the Art Museum's Spring Exhibition." Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, May 23, 1897, p. 179, as Snowbound.
American Art Association—Anderson Galleries 1935–II
The J. K. Newman Collection of Important Paintings by American and French XIX–XX Century Artists. Auction catalogue, December 6, 1935. New York: American Art Association—Anderson Galleries, 1935, lot 15 ill. in b/w, as Snowbound.
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. 492 (catalogue G, no. 557), as Snowbound. (Hale concordance).
Beebe et al. 1984
Beebe, Marjorie, et al. American Reflections: Paintings 1830-1940: From the Collections of Pomona College and Scripps College, Claremont, California. Claremont, Calif.: Trustees of Pomona and Scripps College, 1984, pp. 54–55 ill. in b/w, as Snowbound.
Peters 1989–I
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), pp. 29–30 ill. in b/w, as Snowbound.
Peters 1989–II
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Garden." In In the Sunlight: The Floral and Figurative Art of J. H. Twachtman, by Lisa N. Peters et al. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989 Spanierman), p. 15 ill. in b/w, as Snowbound.
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. 360; vol. 2, p. 898 ill. in b/w (fig. 384), as Snowbound.
Larkin 1996
Larkin, Susan G. "'A Regular Rendezvous for Impressionists:' The Cos Cob Art Colony 1882–1920." Ph.D. dissertation, 1996. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microforms, 1996, pp. xxvi, 60n9, 222–23, 241n23, 451 ill. in b/w (8.5), as Snowbound.
Larkin 1998
Larkin, Susan G. "On Home Ground: John Twachtman and the Familiar Landscape." American Art Journal 29 (1998), pp. 59 ill. in b/w, 60–62, as Snowbound.
Larkin 2001–I
Larkin, Susan G. The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore. New York: National Academy of Design in association with Yale University, 2001. Exhibition catalogue (2001 National Academy of Design), pp. 183–84 ill. in color, 185, as Snowbound.
Commentary

For this view of his Greenwich home, Twachtman's perspective was looking south from the east side of Round Hill Road. While portraying how the dwelling became blended into its surroundings during a blizzard, he captured the features of it that were personally meaningful to him. In an almost monochromatic palette, he used subtle shading to indicate the seam between the older (left) and newer (right) parts of the home and the dormer in the newer section that was the location of his studio. Also visible are the results of his renovations in about 1892–93, including lowered eaves and the construction of a new back entryway, distinguished by a small gable. At the left, the receding line of a stone wall helps to reveal Round Hill Road, winding on an upward angle into the hazy distance. A small shape indicated by the visibility of the work's ground, the well house stands between the wall and the east end of the house. 

Snowbound is a title Twachtman used in about 1888 for a painting of ships in ice (OP.806). It is also the title of another view he created of his home in the snow (OP.907) that was probably the work he exhibited in 1893 at the American Art Galleries and in his three 1901 solo shows. The use of Snowbound for this painting may be original as well, as it seems likely it was the work with this title exhibited by Twachtman in Cincinnati Art Museum's spring exhibition in 1897. The basis for this assumption is a review in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, which stated that the work depicted "a landscape almost obliterated by swirling billows.” This description would not be fitting to Snowbound (OP.907), but it matches this work well. 

Nonetheless, this painting’s early history has yet to be determined. Its first known owner was the New York art collector Henry Smith, who also owned Twachtman’s Rainbow’s Source (OP.1133) and Azaleas (OP.957).  The painting was in the inventory of Milch Galleries in 1922, and it was probably purchased from Milch by another New York art collector, J. K. Newman.

In 1935, the painting was acquired from the sale of Newman’s collection by the West Point–trained Army Major General Edward Clinton Young (1862–1948), who had begun collecting American art in the early 1920s. In 1945 Young moved to Sierra Madre, California. There, as a result of his friendship with the artist Millard Sheets (1907–1989), then chair of the Scripps College Art Department, Young gave his collection of seventy-two paintings to the college, including Snowbound. In addition to Snowbound, his gift included works by Frank Duveneck, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Willard Metcalf, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, and Edmund Tarbell.

Selected Literature

From Larkin 2001–I

In the Scripps College Snowbound, Twachtman used snow to reduce the view to its essentials. He set his easel on the edge of Round Hill Road across from his home. The snow-covered road, rushing past the house on a strong diagonal, dominates the foreground. Beside the road, a stone wall swings from lower right to center left in a compelling calligraphic line. Formally, the wall establishes the structure of the composition. Metaphorically, it  represents New England. According to the 1871 report of the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, stone wall was the principal type of farm fencing in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. . . . Built by farmers clearing their fields before planting, and repaired and extended over the generations, many of the mortarless stone walls were disappearing by the 1890s. As Greenwich farms were divided for housing sites, numerous old walls tumbled into ruin in second-growth forest. On the remaining farms, walls were torn down to accommodate agricultural machinery, which demanded larger fields.
          Meanwhile, a different type of wall was marking the boundaries of the new suburban plots. Constructed of quarried stone transported to the site and set in mortar by skilled Italian stonemasons, those precise walls retained the same rigid form indefinitely. The fashionable new style was not for Twachtman. He so admired the indigenous dry-stone masonry that he built new walls in the old manner to define the spaces in his garden. In an article on Twachtman’s home published in Country Life in 1905, photographs show his handiwork in garden stairs, retaining walls, and edgings for perennial borders (fig. 119). The caption calls attention to the way “an artist handled native stone work,” noting the random pattern of stones and the way they were fitted without mortar. [Goodwin 1905, p. 629] In the Scripps Snowbound, a traditional stone wall separates home ground from the public road [pp. 184–85].