Catalogue Entry
The entry on this painting in the 1944 Parke-Bernet auction catalogue includes a note that reads: "Mrs. Twachtman stated that this picture was painted near Dordrecht on their wedding journey in 1881; purchased from the artist's estate through the agency of Macbeth Galleries."[1] While similar to other works from the sojourn, this may be the painting in which Twachtman best summarized the uniqueness of “Southern Holland's Sketching Grounds,” which drew artists of many nationalities to this area for its natural beauty and its resonance with Dutch seventeenth-century landscapes, which celebrated a spiritual presence in light-filled fields under spacious skies.[2]
In the painting, Twachtman conveyed the close reliance between humans and nature in the Dutch countryside. In the painting, a haystack is at the edge of the waterway at the right, as if to mark the point at which the land had been reclaimed from the sea and put to use. Its conical shape is linked on a diagonal with the similar form of the windmill in the lower left that presides over the landscape, conveying how the inhabitants of the land worked with rather than against nature for survival. Red lines along the horizon, broken by the upright forms of dark trees, represent the horizontal forms of homes lying humbly against the land rather than upright in opposition to it.
This painting remained in the artist's estate at his death and was included in the sale of works from the estate held at Macbeth Gallery in 1919. After it was sold at Parke-Bernet in 1944, it was unlocated until it resurfaced in 2011.
[1] Parke-Bernet 1944.
[2] On this subject, see Annette Stott, “Dordrecht and the South Holland Sketching Grounds,” in Stott 1986, pp. 221–55.
[2] Baskett 1999, pp. 126–30.
From 1919 Macbeth Gallery
A low-lying meadow of dark luxuriant greens skirts the deep waters of a canal in Holland and ends by a clump of trees well over to the right of the picture. In the middle distance some cottages show their red roofs through the trees, and hard-by, sentinel-like, rises an old Dutch windmill. Overhead the sky is heavily overcast with rain-charged clouds.
From Downes 1919
“Holland Meadows” (7) . . . is notable for its lush, moist richness of tone and its local color. It is a veritable epitome of Dutch landscape in its depth of watery atmosphere, its suffused light, its verdant vegetation, its "fat" quality. This admirable little picture was painted at Dordrecht on the artist's wedding journey, in 1881. It reminds one of the best examples of Weissenbruch, and it also has some affinity with Jacob Maris.
From Anderson Galleries 1925–I
Rich green expanse at left with cottages and a windmill, a grove of trees in the distance, limpid body of water at the right, with several punts close to the shore.