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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
The Emerald Pool, ca. 1895 (OP.1312). Fig. 1. Mammoth Terraces Trail, Yellowstone National Park, with Mount Everts at left
Fig. 1. Mammoth Terraces Trail, Yellowstone National Park, with Mount Everts at left
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.1312
The Emerald Pool
Alternate titles: Emerald Pool; In the Yellowstone Park, the Yellowstone Series; The Pool
ca. 1895
Oil on canvas
25 x 25 in. (63.5 x 63.5 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
[the estate sale stamp at lower left has been painted over]
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Image: Edward Owen
Provenance
(American Art Galleries, New York, Twachtman estate sale, March 24, 1903, no. 71, as In the Yellowstone Park, the Yellowstone Series);
to Stanford White, New York;
(Ferargil Gallery, New York);
to present collection, 1921.
Exhibitions
1896 Art Club of Philadelphia probably
Art Club of Philadelphia, Eighth Annual Exhibition of Oil Paintings and Sculpture, November 23–December 21, 1896, no. 76, as The Pool.
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. 71, as In the Yellowstone Park, the Yellowstone Series.
1925 Dallas Art Association
Stoneleigh Court, Dallas, The Fifth Annual Exhibition of the Dallas Art Association, November 16–December 1, 1925, no. 128, as Emerald Pool, lent by Ferargil Galleries.
1927 Phillips Collection
Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C., Tri-Unit Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, February–March 1927, p. 49, as Emerald Pool.
1929 Phillips Memorial Gallery
Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, D.C., Tri-Unit Exhibition of the Season of 1929–30, October 1929–February 1930, no. 7, as Emerald Pool.
1934 Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art, A Survey of American Painting, January 10–February 28, 1934, no. 30, as Emerald Pool.
1959 Russian Federation
Moscow, The American National Exhibition in Moscow, July 25–September 5, 1959, as Emerald Pool.
1976 University of Wyoming Art Museum
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, One Hundred Years of Artist Activity in Wyoming, 1837-1937, October 3–November 7, 1976, as Emerald Pool.
1981 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Master Paintings from the Phillips Collection, July 4–November 1, 1981, no. 75, p. 223 ill. in b/w, as Emerald Pool. Traveled to: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, November 22, 1981–February 16, 1982; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 24–September 16, 1982.
1984 Madison Art Center
Madison Art Center, Wisconsin, The Seasons: American Impressionist Painting, December 8, 1984–January 3, 1985, no. 54, as Emerald Pool.
1986 Art Gallery of Western Australia
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, America: Art and the West, December 11, 1986–January 21, 1987, no. 34, ill. in color, as Emerald Pool. Traveled to: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, February 5–April 5, 1987.
1999 High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, February 26–May 21, 2000. (Peters 1999–I), no. 43, pp. 131, 134 ill. in color, as Emerald Pool. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Literature
Evening Telegraph 1894 probably
Evening Telegraph (Philadelphia), December 15, 1894, p. 7, as The Pool.
Philadelphia Press 1896 probably
"The Art Club Exhibition." Philadelphia Press, November 22, 1896, p. 6, as The Pool.
Public Ledger 1896 probably
"Small But Good: The Exhibition of the Art Club is an Agreeable Display." Public Ledger (Philadelphia), November 23, 1896, p. 7, as The Pool.
Philadelphia Inquirer 1896–I probably
"The Art Club Show is Now the Thing." Philadelphia Inquirer, November 22, 1896, p. 22, as The Pool.
Phillips 1929
Phillips, Duncan. "The Many Mindedness of Modern Painting." Art and Understanding 1 (1929), p. 73 ill. in b/w, as Emerald Pool.
Phillips 1931
Philips, Duncan. The Artist Sees Differently. New York: E. Weyhe, 1931, vol. 2, ill. in b/w (plate lxiv), as Emerald Pool.
Phillips Collection 1952
The Phillips Collection: A Museum of Modern Art and Its Sources. Washington, D.C.: Phillips Collection, 1952, p. 102, ill. in b/w (plate 77).
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, pp. 515 (catalogue G, no. 772, as In the Yellowstone Park), 564 (catalogue A, no. 474), as Emerald Pool. (Hale concordance).
Green 1981
Green, Eleanor. Master Paintings from the Phillips Collection. New York: Shorewood Fine Art Books, 1981, pp. 136–37 ill. in color, as Emerald Pool.
Kornhauser 1996
Kornhauser, Elizabeth. American Paintings before 1945 in the Wadsworth Atheneum, 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 764 ill. in b/w, as Emerald Pool.
Passantino 1999
Passantino, Erika D. The Eye of Duncan Phillips: A Collection in the Making. Washington, D.C.: Phillips Collection in association with Yale University, 1999, pp. 157–58 ill. in color, as Emerald Pool.
Peters 1999–I
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 131, 134 ill. in color, as Emerald Pool.
Peters 2024
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman: An American Impressionist's Yellowstone." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 74 (Autumn 2024), pp. 16 ill. in color, 20–21, as Emerald Pool.
Commentary

This painting has been known by the title of Emerald Pool since 1925. However, it is not a view of the Emerald Pool in the Black Sand Basin in the Upper Geyser Basin, near Old Faithful (depicted in Emerald Pool,  OP.1311 and Edge of the Emerald Pool, OP.1313). Instead it is a pool in the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces, near the northern entrance to the park. Mount Everts is at left; the foothills and silhouette of Bunsen Peak is at right. In between is the Washburn Range (fig. 1). The site is possibly Canary Springs. Tipping his canvas on an extreme forward angle, Twachtman combined the distant mountains, the cropped edge of the geyser, and the sunlit calcium-rich volcanic ground into a decoratively conceived abstract design oriented to the work's square format. Given the location, the painting was probably among Twachtman's first or last Yellowstone paintings. 

This may have been the painting Twachtman exhibited as The Pool at the Art Club of Philadelphia in 1896, which was described in the Philadelphia Press as an image of “a snow-filled canyon or crevice in which the pool is conspicuous by its silence.” According to the newspaper, the scene featured “a group of huge rocks with a spray of water at their feet . . . aglow with that delicious light and play of color which Twachtman alone of our landscape painters beholds in nature.” While acknowledging that Twachtman’s scene was unusual, the writer stated that the painting was, nonetheless, “a picture clear, distinct, accurate and unmistakable, of the fashion in which sandstone cliffs in an early stage of erosion in an atmosphere considerably elevated above the surface of the sea, present themselves in the chill vision of quiet air which succeeds the first light snow of the season when it has come to stay.” 

Not among the Yellowstone works owned by William A. Wadsworth, who funded Twachtman's Yellowstone trip, The Emerald Pool was included in the artist's estate sale and once bore a red estate sale stamp at its lower left, which was subsequently painted over, perhaps due to the presence of a signature (other works in the estate sale that were signed were not stamped). The painting was purchased from the sale by the architect Stanford White (1853–1906), who had come to know Twachtman in the 1870s, when both were members of the Tile Club.