Catalogue Entry
Reflections is likely to have been shown at the Society of American Artists in March 1895 as A Pier on Niagara River. The work on view was described in the Art Amateur as “firmly painted,” conveying “a distinct impression of the place—the embankment with its long line of trees, the crooked pier head, with its pent house and the force of water gliding past it.” The Critic mentioned the painting as “a successful study in many ways, but hardly in giving motion to the water, which, we imagine, was his leading intention.”
Given this identification, the painting could have been that on which Theodore Robinson commented in his diary on July 1, 1894: “Called on . . . Twachtman . . . and he showed us some canvases done at Ni[a]gara, very good—one square one—30 x 30 is particularly good. One, on the river, is pretty, but looks to me a little too much like a Monet.”[1]
Reflections may have been Twachtman’s title for the painting. A work with the title Reflections was included in his 1901 exhibitions in Chicago and Cincinnati. A critic for the Chicago Journal wrote that two of the works on view, Reflecting and Reflections, “both done on the water” were “as entrancing in color as any Venice scene ever painted—if seen at the distance of across the room. There is exquisite art in the most of Mr. Twachtman’s paintings, whether most people or only the few admire it or not. On no other canvases are seen so much light and color.”
Perhaps purchased by a collector during Twachtman’s lifetime, the painting belonged to the New York art dealer Alexander Morten by 1913. It was included in the sale of the Morten collection in 1916, from which it was acquired by Knoedler for $2,000. Knoedler sold it to Milch in May of 1919 for $2,625.[2] Subsequently it was in the collection of lawyer and art collector Horatio Seymour Rubens (1869–1941). The painting was one of a group of sixty-seven paintings from the Rubens collection that Knoedler handled in 1944, and the gallery sold the work that year to the Brooklyn Museum.[3]
[1]Theodore Robinson diaries, July 1, 1894, Frick Art Reference Library, New York.
[2] Knoedler Book 6, Stock No. 13860, p. 122, row. 31. Dealer Stock Books, M. Knoedler & Co., Records, Getty Archives.
[3] Knoedler Book 9, Stock No. A2866, p. 73, row. 19. Dealer Stock Books, M. Knoedler & Co., Records, Getty Archives.
From Carbone 2006
Reflections is somewhat unusual in the expansive quality of the composition, a feature strongly influenced by the site itself as well as by the French Impressionist works of Claude Monet, with which Twachtman was especially familiar from 1893 . . . . The receding river view, organized along a strong diagonal that is further accentuated by the line of tall trees lining the bank, is countered by the sharply foreshortened form of the angular pier. The compositional similarity to Monet is attributable in part to the interest of both men in the aesthetic of Japanese prints. . . . Here the Japanese influence is visible in the sweeping compositional lines and square format of the canvas, a device often employed by Monet and used from an early date by Twachtman, additionally encourages the reading of the canvas a two-dimensional design. Twachtman’s brushwork in this canvas is particularly reminiscent of Monet’s. As the title Reflections suggests, Twachtman was especially interested in the description of the watery foreground, where he suggested the reflections through a juxtaposition of broadly applied purple, blue, green, and yellow tones. Throughout the canvas, the lively brushwork conforms to the shapes of the pictorial elements. The overall result is a sense of visual vibration that is a departure from Twachtman’s customarily muted, evocative effects.
- Museum website (brooklynmuseum.org)