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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Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy), ca. 1884 (OP.713). Fig. 1. Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, postcard, n.d.
Fig. 1. Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, postcard, n.d.
Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy), ca. 1884 (OP.713). Fig. 2. Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Fig. 2. Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy), ca. 1884 (OP.713). Fig. 3. Niche, Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Fig. 3. Niche, Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy), ca. 1884 (OP.713). Fig. 4. Niche with the Virgin and Child, Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Fig. 4. Niche with the Virgin and Child, Pont de la Vierge, Martin-Église, 2019.
Image: Lisa N. Peters
Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy), ca. 1884 (OP.713). Fig. 5. Living and dining rooms, Twachtman’s home, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1890s, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society.
Fig. 5. Living and dining rooms, Twachtman’s home, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1890s, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society.
Keywords
OP.713
Pont de la Vierge (Martin-Église, Normandy)
Alternate titles: Old Bridge; Pont de la Bierge; Pont de la Vierge; Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy
ca. 1884
Oil on panel
10 x 17 in. (25.4 x 43.2 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Private collection
Exhibitions
1885 J. Eastman Chase's Gallery
J. Eastman Chase's Gallery, Boston, Paintings by John H. Twachtman, February 10–20, 1885, no. 15, as Pont de la Vierge.
1887 American Art Galleries
American Art Galleries, New York, American Paintings and Sculpture, opened December 3, 1887, no. 243, as Pont de la Bierge.
1888 Society of American Artists
Yandell Galleries, New York, Tenth Annual Exhibition, Society of American Artists, April 9–May 5, 1888, no. 119, as Old Bridge.
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. 25, as Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy, lent by Colonel J. Alden Twachtman, Greenwich, Connecticut.
1982 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Americans in Brittany and Normandy, 1860-1910, September 24–November 28, 1982, no. 51, pp. 167, 227 ill. in color, as Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy. Traveled to: Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, December 6, 1982–February 6, 1983; Phoenix Art Museum, March 18–May 1, 1983; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C, District of Columbia, June 10–August 14, 1983.
Literature
Boston Daily Advertiser 1885
"The Fine Arts, Mr. Twachtman's Painting." Boston Daily Advertiser, February 13, 1885, p. 4, as Pont de la Vierge.
Child 1888–I
Child, Theodore. "Recent American Landscape." Art Amateur 19 (June 1888), p. 2, as Old Bridge.
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. 1, pp. 196–97 ill. in b/w (fig. 24), 198; vol. 2, pp. 569 (catalogue A, no. 546), 435 (catalogue G, no. 84, as Old Bridge, as Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy. (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, p. 204; vol. 2, p. 722 ill. in b/w (fig. 190), as Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy.
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), p. 62, as Shrine on the Bridge, Honfleur, Normandy.
Commentary

Shown as Pont de la Vierge (no. 15) in Twachtman’s first solo exhibition, held at J. Eastman Chase’s Gallery, Boston, in 1885, this painting depicts a view of the hamlet of Martin-Église, located a few kilometers to the north of the Normandy town of Arques-la-Bataille, where the artist spent the summer of 1884.[1] At the work's center is the double-arched bridge crossing the Eaulne River, named Pont de la Vièrge for its stone tabernacle housing a twelfth-century statue of the Virgin and Child (fig. 1). The bridge exists today, but no longer crosses the road (figs. 2–4). 

In the painting, Twachtman set the low bridge on a diagonal to the picture plane, its form and shrine reflected in the narrow river. He conveyed the accessibility of the village in the road that continues past homes that enliven the scene by forming a secondary diagonal within the design. Throughout the work, he used his French manner of delicate tonalities and soft blending, leaving little evidence of his brushwork. 

When the painting was on view in 1885 at Chase’s Gallery, a critic for Boston Daily Advertiser commented that Twachtman did not just render what he observed, but made his feelings for his motifs apparent: “[The] Pont de la Vièrge shows perhaps better than any other example in the collection—what all of them show in some degree—the artist’s keen pictorial sense, which leads him naturally to subjects full of interest and beauty in themselves, and makes them to appear still more so by the enthusiasm with which they are treated.”

The painting was one of three works Twachtman sent to a show at the American Art Association in 1887. In the next year, he included it in the tenth annual exhibition of the Society of American Artists. In the 1890s, as revealed in a photograph, he hung it on a living room wall in his home in Greenwich, no doubt as a memento of a delightful summer in the French countryside (fig. 5). 

[1] I would like to thank Philippe Gautrot, founder and director of the Académie Bach, Arques-la-Bataille, for his assistance in locating the site of this work.