Catalogue Entry
On April 6, 1885, Twachtman wrote to Julian Alden Weir from Paris: "I took a month from school this winter and painted a large canvas for the Salon but it was rejected. [William Turner] Dannat liked it and was much surprised to hear of this. Others who saw it seemed sure of its getting in all right and I should not dwell upon it if it were not that I know of some very bad works accepted."[1]
New research reveals that Arques-la-Bataille—which is dated “1885” and inscribed "Paris"—was the work to which he was referring. This confirms that Twachtman created it in his Paris studio over the course of a month in the winter of 1885 for submission to the 1885 Paris Salon. When the painting was rejected, as Twachtman conveyed to Weir, he was both surprised and disappointed. The evidence that the painting was, indeed, his Salon entry came to light in reviews of the Second Prize Fund exhibition, held at New York’s American Art Galleries from May through November 1886. In the show, Twachtman exhibited a work titled Landscape that, on the basis of descriptions by critics, was clearly Arques-la-Bataille, while a statement in the New York Tribune connected the work with Twachtman's Salon effort, stating: "It is said that this picture was rejected at the Salon. The Salon’s loss is our gain. Mr. Twachtmann has not painted a popular nor an altogether successful picture, but he has shown that he is looking at nature through fresh, appreciative eyes."
Another article, published in the Art Interchange, commented on the work's inscription: "The native landscape men naturally make a very strong show, though in the first gallery, ‘A,’ the honors are rather carried off by the painters painting abroad—the Stephen Parrish; the Twachtman which is dated 'Paris.'"
Twachtman's basis for the work was a smaller plein-air canvas (OP.730), depicting a river valley in Arques-la-Bataille, where he spent the summer of 1884. The scene, as discussed in the entry on the smaller work, is probably from the Arques River Valley, looking in a southwest direction. His view appears to have been at a bend in the river, which continues both toward the left and toward the viewer in the foreground on the right, with its opposing bank on the right cropped by the composition. Here Twachtman maintained the immediacy of the smaller canvas, with the river's embankment directly in the foreground, flush against the picture plane. However, he used this form more decoratively here, treating it as a defined shape, superimposed against the harmonious softened gray tones of the river, hills, and sky. In the embankment at the center of the composition, the verticals of the reeds counterbalance the repeating horizontals, producing a cross-axial design that conveys permanence in its symmetry. Nonetheless, he treated the reeds naturalistically, using calligraphic brushwork to denote their soft flutter in the breeze, as they catch the light on their edges.
Twachtman's approach in the work has been related to that of Whistler's Nocturnes, especially in his thin paint method eliminating evidence of his brush. The influence of Japanese prints has also often noted in the work, in its flatness and surface patterning. At the same time, basing the scene closely on the smaller image, Twachtman did not diverge far from what he observed, creating a work grounded in place although artistically enhanced. He filled the painting with close observations of the ecologically complex landscape before him—the hills stripped of foliage due to agriculture, which made their elevation changes evident from Twachtman's stance, the stands of dark trees that formed decorative curvilinear shapes especially at the hillcrest, and old-growth trees standing tall against the hills, which were protected due to their longevity.[2] However, his choice of a low angle may have distorted distances, making the narrow waterway—which has perhaps flooded beyond its banks—appear wider than it was in actuality and thus more reflective of its surroundings than it would have been from a less-slantd perspective.[3]
Critics reviewing the Second Prize Fund exhibition perceived the painting's originality and deemed it among the best works in the show, even though it was not among the prizewinners (paintings purchased for donation to museum collections). At the American Art Galleries, it was given the pre-eminent spot in the first gallery that visitors encountered, Gallery A on the exhibition's first floor. As the New York Tribune critic stated: "The pictures in the first gallery form an uncommonly interesting display of landscape and marine painting and portraiture, although several of the strongest works have been reserved for the large gallery. On first entering we are given a new idea of Mr. J. H. Twachtman, from a picture more ambitious than anything shown in this city."
The critic went on to describe the painting closely, stating that Twachtman's work,
has usually been strong, but in the "Wet Day," in gallery A, there is shown a sensitiveness to natural effects and a delicacy of treatment quite different from the usual characteristics of his pictures. The foreground is strengthened by the introduction of tall weeds and grasses, the forms well rendered, standing on the edge of a pool whose surface is partly lighted, partly darkened by a cloud shadow. From its further side rises a gradually sloping field to a rather high sky line, the greens of the grass subdued by the mistiness of the atmosphere. The sky, which is left plain save for two or three cloud forms, is full of moisture. The feeling of wetness is given as clearly here as in Mr. Inness’s "Gray Lowery Day," and the artist has certainly succeeded in conveying a truthful impression of the effect of a summer shower. . . . is evident that the picture portrays with much delicacy and general truth a fascinating phase of nature.
Several of the exhibition’s reviewers related the painting to works by French Impressionists, on view concurrently in the second venue at the National Academy of Design of the large landmark exhibition sent to New York in 1886 by the Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Marianna van Rensselaer wrote that some of the paintings that received medals accorded with her personal taste, but one that met with her approval was not a medal winner. She stated: "And this one is so peculiar that we can hardly wonder it did not appeal to every eye with equal force." She went on to note:
It is a large landscape by Mr. Twachtmann, who was an “impressionist” in his work long before we knew the French Impressionists by sight, and almost before we knew them very well by name. Never has he been more impressionistic than in this canvas; yet it has absolutely no technical likeness whatever to its foreign cousins. I have already tried to describe their methods of procedure. Mr. Twachtmann has neither their love of brilliant color and vivid lighting, nor their liking for queer, scratchy, uncouth methods of execution. In former days he loved a dark tone and somber hues. In this picture the tone is light and the colors tender—the soft grays and greens and blues shown by a spring landscape just after a shower, while the air is still full of an almost imperceptible mist. It is this effect which has been the raison d’etre of the picture, which shows a reedy foreground, with a stretch of placid water beyond, and beyond this a long, low hillside and a quiet sky with one or two clouds. It is most beautifully and perfectly and poetically rendered, and without the introduction of anything that could possibly be called detail—unless we may apply the word to a bunch of tall water-weeds very broadly painted in the foreground. Any one of the French pictures which to some eyes have seemed so lacking in detail, has more of it than this canvas where the tones are laid on in broad, smooth, unbroken spaces, that, when we note how broad and smooth and unbroken indeed they were, make us marvel at the skill which, while painting in so abstract a way, could yet produce so complete and so charming an impression. Of course, when one thinks upon it, it is just this abstraction of all detail, just this reduction of everything to the broadest, simplest masses, which produces the effect of delicately veiling yet not shrouding mistiness. But it is a wonderful piece of work to see, nevertheless.
Other critics described the painting as if they were experiencing the landscape itself, an aspect of it enhanced by its scale and soft, palpable luminosity. In The Studio, Clarence Cook described the painting as more "harmonious and more of a unit than ‘The French Garden,’" the painting Twachtman exhibited at the first Prize Fund show, held in the previous year (location unknown). Cook went on to state: "There is no use, and no sense, in quarrelling with a man of talent, and Mr. Twachtman is a man of real talent; still, we hope that he will one day give up the vain search to express the inexpressible, and be satisfied in telling us what can be told. But, taking what we find, here are lovely clouds, stealing softly up over the brow of a hill-side—trooping ground for fairies—sloping down to an enchanted mere. In front, the reeds rustle noiselessly their tall spears, drooping their penons [sic, probably pendants] in the slumbering air. This is a companion to the 'Songs without Words'—A Picture without Painting."
In September 1886 the painting was sent along with other works from the Second Prize Fund exhibition to the St. Louis Exposition. There, a writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat with the initials W.R.H., compared it with Frank Boggs’s Entrance of Harbor at Honfleur, 1885 (Brooklyn Museum). The writer noted that Bogg’s painting was “suggestive,” but it did not consist of “what nature is,” whereas Twachtman had "absorbed an impression of masses of light and shade and tone.” The critic stated that in his landscape, Twachtman had “given an impression, not an imitation or even an interpretation of nature, and if one divest himself of preconceived notions and looks at the work in relation to nature, he will find the impression a remarkably truthful one."
The painting did not sell from the Second Prize Fund Show and in the early 1890s, Twachtman retitled it, exhibiting it as Decorative Landscape, in the Retrospective Exhibition of the Society of American Artists, held in 1892 and in the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, held in 1893. Reviews of the former show described the painting as “a curiously broad-painted landscape [New York Times 1892–III]” and a work “painted in very broad, smooth brush-strokes; low notes of green and gray depict a wet sky, a river and rushy banks" [Magazine of Art 1893]. At the latter show, a writer for the Critic stated that Twachtman's “Decorative Landscape” depicted “a reedy lake with low hills on the farther side” that was painted “in the usual French style.” Reporting on the Chicago exhibition, the Richmond Dispatch commented that Twachtman's Decorative Landscape was "almost Japanese in its simplicity and beauty." At the conclusion of the World's Columbian Exposition, Twachtman sent Decorative Landscape to a show organized by the Woman's Club of Louisville, Kentucky, held at Hampton College.
Arques-la-Bataille does not appear to have been exhibited again in Twachtman's lifetime, and its earlier history was forgotten. The work was reproduced in Eliot Clark's 1924 book, but its caption lists it as "Study for the larger canvas," with dimensions that match the smaller version of the scene. This led Hale in his 1957 dissertation to believe that the image in Clark's book was the study, while the smaller painting was the finished canvas (see Selected literature). Hale conferred extensively Alden Twachtman while writing his dissertation, but he does not appear to have seen the painting in person, even though it belonged to Alden at the time. Hale also catalogued the work inaccurately, indicating that it was signed on the lower right (it is signed on the lower left) with the artist’s initials, “J.H.T.” and dated “1883.”
The painting was lent by Martha Twachtman to the exhibition of work by four leading American Impressionists held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1932. By 1968 it had been passed down to Alden Twachtman’s son Eric, who lent it to the show of Twachtman’s work held at the Ira Spanierman Gallery (fig. 1) There it was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although it has been conjectured for some time that the painting was Twachtman's 1885 Paris Salon submission, it is only recently that its full history has come to light.
[1] Twachtman, Paris, to Julian Alden Weir, April 6, 1895, Weir Family Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
[2] I would like to thank Richard Seager, Ph.D., Palisades Geophysical Institute/Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, for consulting on the painting's site and ecological aspects.
[3] According to Philippe Gautrot, founder and director of the Académie Bach, Arques-la-Bataille, flooding does not usually occur in Arques-la-Bataille in the summer of fall, when Twachtman visited the town. However, Richard Seager (see note 2) directs attention to the Old World Drought Atlas, which indicates that the climate became wetter in northern France in the late nineteenth century, after more than a century of dryer conditions. This could have thrown the streams and rivers of the Arques Valley into disequilibrium. For analysis of the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA), 1883–85, see Edward R. Cook et al, “Old World Megadroughts and Pluvials During the Common Era,” Science Advances 1. November 6, 2015: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/1/10/e1500533.full.pdf, and Serena R. Scholz, Richard Seager, Mingfang Ting, et al, "Changing Hydroclimate Dynamics and the 19th to 20th Century Wetting Trend in the English Channel Region of Northwest Europe," Climate Dynamics (September 2021), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05977-5, accessed October 4, 2021.
From New York Sun and New York Herald 1920
Included one or two extremely early pictures, in which Twachtman was feeling his way, but was already Twachtman. One of these . . . is so large that it is practically mural. It is amazingly dexterous as painting, and the reeds that flare up in the foreground across the waters could not have been excelled by a Japanese.
From Hale 1957
Then with his virtuosity under control, Twachtman began to use it again, but discreetly. Illustrating this return of confidence is the Jones Arques-la-Bataille [OP.730]. If one compares it with the Clark Arques-la-Bataille he will see that, while both oils are typical of the period, in handling and subject matter, with their large expanses of calm water and delicately handled reeds and grasses, the Jones painting appears to indicate a lighter mood on the part of the artist. Here we see a foreground of herbage and flowers painted with a carefree impasto superficially reminiscent of Munich. Perhaps it was executed later in the season, which would account for the flowers, but no seasonal change would explain how the silhouette of the background became a joyful curve in the Jones picture when it was shown as an almost straight horizontality in the Clark. Surely these changes bespeak an increased confidence, indicating that the Jones oil is later in more ways than chronologically and that the more rhythmic lines and scarcely restrained brush bravado are indicate of renewed assurance [vol. 1, p. 200].
Certainly Arques-la-Bataille . . . suggests his familiarity with Japanese prints such as Hiroshige’s Sumida River, Hashiba Ferry, and Tile Kilns, in its calculated arrangement of forms, including some reeds placed close to the picture plane; in its strong, often sinuous, contours; and in the areas of color broadly, almost flatly, applied in distinct bands.
- Museum website (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12842)