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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Keywords
WC.804
Waterside Scene
Alternate title: Pier near Newport
ca. 1889
Watercolor and gouache on yellow cardboard
9 3/4 x 6 1/2 in. (24.8 x 16.5 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman–
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts, Bequest of William R. Mead (PWC.1936.1)
Exhibitions
1985 Art Museum Association
Art Museum Association, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, American Drawings and Watercolors from Amherst College, August 13–October 19, 1985, p. 35 ill. in color, as Waterside Scene. Traveled to: Akron Art Museum, Ohio, December 8, 1985–February 2, 1986; Federal Reserve Art Gallery, Federal Reserve Bank, Kansas City, Missouri, March 2–April 27, 1986; Union Art Gallery, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, August 31–October 10, 1986; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana, November 13, 1986–January 10, 1987; Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 1–April 26, 1987; Muskegon Museum, Michigan, May 31–July 31, 1987.
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. 584 (catalogue A, no. 833), as Waterside Scene. (Hale concordance).
Barter 1982
Barter, Judith. "American Paintings, Pastels, Watercolors in the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts." Antiques 122 (November 1982), p. 1050 ill. in b/w, as Waterside Scene.
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. 257; vol. 2, p. 793 ill. in b/w (fig. 268), as Waterside Scene.
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), pp. 79–80 ill. in color, as Waterside Scene.
Commentary

Waterside Scene is a view looking west along the Newport's Long Wharf, as seen from the Jamestown side of the Narragansett Channel. The spire of St. Paul’s Methodist Church on Marlborough Street (built in 1806) is in the middle distance.[1] Twachtman rendered the same subject in his pastel, The Dock (P.804), but here he chose a more rectangular composition and rendered the scene from a greater distance. This seems fitting to his more vibrant result here, in which he used watercolor and gouache with precision rather than watery looseness to create a well-structured design. In the contour of the wharf on an upward curved trajectory, with other forms as clearly defined receding shapes, the image suggests his study of Japanese prints, such as Hiroshige's Cherry Blossoms on the Banks of the Tamagawa, 1856.

The first owner of Waterside Scene was the architect William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928), a partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The work was part of Mead’s bequest in 1936 to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1867.

[1]  The church was identified by Bertram Lippincott III, Librarian, Newport Historical Society, letter, March 1993.