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John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society

Catalogue Entry

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Additional Images
Fujiyama, ca. 1888 (OP.808). Fig. 1. Twachtman, reproduction of Fujiyama illustrating Percival Lowell, "Fuji: The Sacred Mountain, Poem." Scribner's Magazine 4 (September 1888), p. 365.
Fig. 1. Twachtman, reproduction of Fujiyama illustrating Percival Lowell, "Fuji: The Sacred Mountain, Poem." Scribner's Magazine 4 (September 1888), p. 365.
Fujiyama, ca. 1888 (OP.808). Fig. 2. Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Sky (Gaifū kaisei), also known as Red Fuji, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1830–32, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 9 5/8 x 14 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1914 (JP9).
Fig. 2. Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Sky (Gaifū kaisei), also known as Red Fuji, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1830–32, woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 9 5/8 x 14 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1914 (JP9).
Keywords
OP.808
Fujiyama
Alternate title: Fuji: The Sacred Mountain
ca. 1888
Oil on canvas-covered cardboard
16 1/16 x 10 in. (40.8 x 25.4 cm)
Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Harold W. Nichols (1964.165)
Provenance
Probably (Ralston Galleries, New York, 1920);
Harold W. Nichols, Cincinnati, by 1947;
gift to present collection, 1964.
Exhibitions
1920 Ralston Galleries
Ralston Galleries, New York, An Exhibition of Paintings by Frank Duveneck and His Circle, November 22–December 6, 1920, no. 19, as Fujiyama.
1947 Taft Museum
Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Earlier American Paintings of Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Nichols, opened April 26, 1947, no. 19, as Fujiyama.
1979 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, The Golden Age: Cincinnati Painters of the Nineteenth Century Represented in the Cincinnati Art Museum, October 6, 1978–January 13, 1979, no. 282, as Fujiyama.
Literature
Lowell 1888
Lowell, Percival. "Fuji: The Sacred Mountain, Poem." Scribner's 4 (September 1888), p. 365 ill. in b/w, in engraving by Elbridge Kingsley, as Fuji: The Sacred Mountain.
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. 550 (catalogue A, no. 196), as Fujiyama. (Hale concordance).
Carter and Weber 1979
Carter, Denny and Bruce Weber. The Golden Age: Cincinnati Painters of the Nineteenth Century Represented in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1979, pp. 105–6, 195 ill. in b/w, as Fujiyama.
Janson 1982
Janson, Anthony. "The Cincinnati Landscape Tradition." In Celebrate Cincinnati Art: In Honor of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Cincinnati Art Museum, 1881–1981. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1982. Exhibition catalogue, p. 24, as Fujiyama.
Pyne 1989
Pyne, Kathleen A. "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), p. 51 ill. in b/w, as Fujiyama.
Richard 1989
Richard, Paul. "John Twachtman's Scenes of Silence: At the National Gallery, Meditations on the Landscape." Washington Post, October 22, 1989, p. G10, as Fujiyama.
Spencer 2000
Spencer, Harold. "J. Alden Weir and the Image of the American Farm." In A Connecticut Place: Weir Farm—An American Painter's Rural Retreat, by Nicholai Cikovsky, Jr, et al. Wilton, Conn.: Weir Farm Trust in collaboration with the National Park Service, Weir Farm National Historic Site, 2000. Exhibition catalogue (2000 Weir Farm Trust), p. 58, as Fujiyama.
Lyman 2004
Lyman, Laurel. "The Influence of Japonisme on the American Impressionists." Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate School of the City University of New York, 2004. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microforms, 2004, p. 104 ill. in b/w (fig. 74), as Fujiyama.
Commentary

Twachtman created this painting for an illustration that appeared in Scribner's Magazine in September 1888, accompanying Percival Lowell's poem, “Fuji: The Sacred Mountain.” In the poem, Lowell described the Japanese mountain as “twixt sea and sky” as it greeted the sunrise light (fig. 1). Twachtman's painting captures the spirit of Lowell's poem, while evoking Hokusai's famed images of the mountain in woodblock prints, in which it symbolizes permanence, often in contrast with figures who struggle in boats below it against crashing waves (fig. 2). Twachtman's image, in which morning mists shroud the mountain, while its white summit is reflected in the sea, is more ethereal than Hokusai's, but it similarly expresses the majesty and timelessness of the subject, depicting the mountain both above the clouds and in the water below. 

In the article, Twachtman's image was cropped, eliminating the reflection in the water. This was perhaps so that it fit Lowell's description of the mountain as a "perfect cone, its peak snow-white, throned in mid-air, its base obliterate." 

Selected Literature

From Pyne 1989

Japanese Winter Landscape of 1879 (fig. 2) and Fujiyama of c. 1885 (fig. 3) [OP.318], for example, more blatantly exemplify the way in which Twachtman was working to internalize the abstract brushwork and simplified, flattened spaces of Asian painting and prints.