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
OP.529
Winter in Cincinnati
ca. 1883–84
Oil on panel
13 1/4 x 15 3/4 in. (33.7 x 40 cm)
Signed lower right: Twachtmann
Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, Florida (previously on long-term loan from The Martin Andersen-Gracia Andersen Foundation, Inc. (2022.30)
Literature
Christie's, New York 1986–II
Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Auction catalogue, December 5, 1986. New York: Christie's, 1986, lot 196 ill. in color, as Winter in Cincinnati.
Christie's, New York 1988–II
Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. Auction catalogue, December 2, 1988. New York: Christie's, 1988, lot 214 ill. in color, as Winter in Cincinnati.
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. 163; vol. 2, p. 697 ill. in b/w (fig. 158), as Winter in Cincinnati.
Peters 2006–II
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Realist Art and the Aesthetic Liberation of Modern Life." In John Twachtman (1853–1902): A "Painter's Painter", by Lisa N. Peters. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2006. Exhibition catalogue (2006 Spanierman), pp. 49–50 ill. in color (fig. 49), as Winter in Cincinnati.
Commentary

A label on this painting’s verso is from J. Eastman Chase's Gallery, Boston. This suggests that it was included in one of Twachtman's two solo shows at the gallery, held in February 1885 and January 1886. No winter scenes were featured in the 1885 show, but two were on view in 1886. These are presumed to be: Winter (OP.732) and Winter, Near Paris (OP.733). It is therefore likely that this painting was one the gallery handled at another time. A second label on the work reads: “No. 25,” but its source is unknown. That Twachtman signed the painting with the double n in his last name is another clue that it was rendered during his French period and that he intended it for exhibition.

The painting, nonetheless, fits in subject and style with Twachtman's views of Avondale, created in 1883. The scene is similar to that in the etching, Snow Landscape (E.504), probably exhibited at the New York Etching Club in 1883. Both feature high vantage points across snow-covered landscapes in which roads recede into the distance while thawed streams move in the opposite direction. However, the formats of the two works differ. The etching is more horizontal and has a wider perspective, with a small home set below the hills at the left. Whereas the etching is suggestive of a countryside location, this painting's tall building is typical of urban structures in Cincinnati, serving as a harbinger of the development of the area into a suburb. In the forward tilt of the picture plane in this painting, Twachtman created emphasis on the movement into the distance, and building at a higher point in the composition, hastens the the viewer's eye around the bend in the snow-covered road.  

The painting's earliest-known owner was the Portland, Oregon, banker William Mead Ladd (1855–1931), a prominent art collector in the Pacific Northwest, who was one of the founders of the Portland Art Association (now the Portland Art Museum). (A handwritten label on the work's indicates Ladd's ownership.) The painting remained in Ladd's family until 1986.