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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
Venetian Study, ca. 1881 (OP.653). Fig. 1. Frank Duveneck, Harbour Chioggia, n.d., oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 27 7/8 in., Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Bequest of Candace C. Stimson (1944.16).
Fig. 1. Frank Duveneck, Harbour Chioggia, n.d., oil on canvas, 19 5/8 x 27 7/8 in., Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Bequest of Candace C. Stimson (1944.16).
Keywords
OP.653
Venetian Study
ca. 1881
Oil on panel
3 13/16 x 7 1/8 in. (9.7 x 18.1 cm)
Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Louise Drude (1916.12)
Provenance
Louise F. Drude, Cincinnati;
bequest to present collection, 1916.
Exhibitions
1916 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, Twenty-Third Annual Exhibition of American Art, May 27–July 31, 1916, no. 278, as Venetian Study.
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. 6, p. 21 ill. in b/w, as Venetian Study.
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. 289, p. 107, as Venetian Study.
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, pp. 574–75 (catalogue A, no. 646), as Venetian Study. (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, p. 107, as Venetian Study.
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. 148; vol. 2, p. 676 (fig. 34), as Venetian Study.
Commentary

John and Martha Twachtman ended their 1881 honeymoon with a trip to Venice at the end of the year. There they joined artist friends, including Henry Muhrman and his wife, Frank Duveneck, Robert Blum, and Otto Bacher. During the visit, Twachtman probably accompanied Duveneck and Bacher on painting excursions to Chioggia, a mini-Venice on the lagoon that was home during the late nineteenth century to a large fishing fleet and an active boat-building industry. Both Duveneck and Bacher created works with Chioggia titles, and this small, loosely rendered oil, depicting shacks and boats anchored at a low shoreline, resembles similar features in Duveneck’s Harbour, Chioggia, ca. 1880 (fig. 1).

The painting was first owned by Louise F. Drude (1849–1913), a naturalist and supporter of the American Humane Society.[1]

[1] On Louise F. Drude, see “Recent Humane Benefactions,” The National Humane Review 2 (April 1914), p. 80 and Snow Scene (OP.511).