Catalogue Entry
This painting is the only work by Twachtman that is known to have belonged to the noted art collector Thomas B. Clarke (1816–1908). The painting was in the exhibition of his collection that was held at the American Art Galleries in 1883, as Meadow Brook. By 1919, the painting was in the inventory of Macbeth Gallery, also as Meadow Brook. Subsequently it was known by a few different titles. Also in 1883, it was in a show at Vose in Boston, where it was titled Drifting Clouds. When the work was sold at the American Art Association in 1929, its title had become Midsummer. In 1938, the painting was sold again at the American Art Assocation, this time as Spring Freshet, its current title. However, when the painting belonged to David B. Findlay, by 1957, it was again known as Drifting Clouds.
It seems likely that the work depicts Cincinnati's Mill Creek, a subject to which Twachtman seems to have returned often, featuring it in works including the etching Mill Creek, Cincinnati (E.503). He also created a smaller version of this scene in The Valley (OP.530).
From 1919 Macbeth
Through the center of the picture, its sandy bed showing here and there, flows a shallow brook from whose banks the green meadowlands, bathed in summer sunshine, slope upward to the right and left. In the middle ground, and growing close by the water’s edge is a group of trees distinguished from the long line of trees in the background beyond by virtue of a brighter, richer green. Overhead white summer clouds broken with patches of blue float buoyantly across the sky.
From American Art Association 1929
Midsummer. A narrow creek of evanescent turquoise-blue water winds into the foreground between rocky banks, which rise gently at either side and are carpeted with fresh green verdure. Beyond is the edge of a forest stretching away to the right, under a fine blue sky hung with ivory-tinted cumulus clouds.