John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
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Additional Images
Lower Falls of Yellowstone, ca. 1895 (OP.1304). Fig. 1. Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, west of Lookout Point, June 2022
Fig. 1. Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, west of Lookout Point, June 2022
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Related Work
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OP.1304
Lower Falls of Yellowstone
Alternate titles: Lower Falls of Yellowstone (Yellowstone Falls); Waterfall, Yellowstone Park; Waterfall: Yosemite
ca. 1895
Oil on canvas
30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Private collection, Promised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Exhibitions
1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition
Department of Fine Arts, San Francisco, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, February 20–December 4, 1915, no. 4069, as Waterfall: Yosemite, lent by Mrs. Gustav Radeke.
1966 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 75, as Lower Falls of Yellowstone (Yellowstone Falls), lent by Mr. and Mrs. J. Russell Parsons.
Literature
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. 582 (catalogue A, no. 781), as Waterfall, Yellowstone Park. (Hale concordance).
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, 373; vol. 2, p. 917 (ill. in b/w fig. 403), as Lower Falls of Yellowstone (Yellowstone Falls).
Commentary

In a letter of September 22, 1895 to William A. Wadsworth, who had funded his Yellowstone trip, Twachtman mentioned: “I want to go to Lower Falls, they are fine.”[1] This comment suggests that it was after that date that he walked either to the base of the falls or to a place where the cascade was readily in view. However, this image is not a view from below because Twachtman included in it a view of the top of the falls, where the river gathers at the waterfall's brink (fig. 1). The painting is closely related to Waterfall, Yellowstone (OP.1305), which is even more limited in depth, with the water spanning much of the canvas space. He probably rendered the two works in quick succession, expressing his immediate response to the falling water with almost ferocious loaded brush movements pressed forcefully against the canvas surface. Here he centered the falls in his square canvas and emphasized the point at which the falls and river converge.  

This painting’s first known owner was Elizabeth Greene Metcalf Radeke (1854–1931) (Mrs. Gustave Radeke), who lent the work to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and gave it that year to the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, at a time when she was its president. By 1957 the painting had been deaccessioned.

[1] John H. Twachtman to William A. Wadsworth, September 22, 1895.