Catalogue Entry
Twachtman exhibited this painting in the first exhibition of the Ten American Painters as Early Spring. He also included it, as Spring, in his 1901 exhibitions in Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati.
In the work, Twachtman united a few features of his Greenwich life that were meaningful to him, including Horseneck Brook, winding through the undulating countryside, one of the willow trees he planted on its banks to enhance the setting aesthetically, and one of his children enjoying the outdoor life in a rowboat. The child in the boat, a blond-haired girl, seems to let the boat move of its own accord. This aspect of the work relates it to images Twachtman created of a child alone in a sailboat as it enters into a zone of mist that obscures the line between water and sky, such as Sailing in the Mist (OP.976). In this painting, he drew on Voyage of Life imagery, in which an individual’s passage from birth to death is represented as a lone figure in a boat that is subject to a waterway’s movement and currents. Thus, he could have intended a symbolic remembrance of his daughter Elsie, who died at age nine in 1895.
The Brooklyn artist George F. Of (1876–1954) purchased this painting from Twachtman’s 1901 Cincinnati exhibition, possibly having seen it in New York. On May 14 of that year, Twachtman sent a letter to Joseph Gest (1859–1935), assistant director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, stating: “Dear Mr. Gest, will you please send picture called Spring to Geo. T. Off, 66 East 8th Street, New York City? It is a picture 25 x 30 upright and something like this. There is a small boat with a child in it off in the middle ground. . . . Before sending the picture take all prices off the back and mark in good sized figure $500” (fig. 1)[1]
Gest replied on May 20 that he had sent the work per Twachtman’s request.[2] Of would later become a noted collector of modernist works by American and European artists and would create his own Fauvist-inspired landscapes that were admired by such discerning critics as Walter Pach, Willard Huntington-Wright, and Charles Caffin as well as by the influential photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz.
[1] John H. Twachtman to Joseph H. Gest, May 14, 1901.
[2] Joseph H. Gest to John H. Twachtman, May 20, 1901.
From New York Commercial Advertiser 1898–III
In an “Early Spring” there is a queer anatomical construction of nature, for a boat on a stream seems to be running uphill, while the composition is uninteresting to a degree.
Of Twachtman’s examples the best are “New Bridge” [OP.981], “Early Spring,” and “On the Terrace” [OP.963]. The two former canvases have the artist’s characteristic delicate and delicious color scheme, and the last has an atmosphere and sentiment which almost recalls Breton. It is a serious and able work.
From Van Dyke 1898
Mr. Twachtman’s landscapes hanging on the upper row, particularly the “Early Spring” (No. 36), are perhaps more broadly treated than the terrace picture, but they have the same charm of light, form, and color; and this without distorting or giving a false impression of nature.