Catalogue Entry
Twachtman's similar but smaller, View on the Brette, Bethune (OP.724), was probably the basis for this painting, indicating that its subject is also the Béthune River Valley in Arques-la-Bataille. However, it is just as likely that Twachtman intended the two paintings as independent works. In fact, he signed the smaller canvas, but did not sign Springtime, which he gave to his close friend Frank Duveneck. Despite the lack of a signature on the work, Springtime is clearly one of Twachtman’s most accomplished French period paintings. Eliminating details present in the smaller canvas and limiting his palette to cool blues and greens, he created a unified image in which the animated aspects of the natural world only become apparent through sustained concentration on the viewer’s part. The work’s axial construction steadies the viewer's gaze, drawing attention to the light breeze in the trees and the softened reflections in the water’s surface, in which the sky is also mirrored. A solitary house, to the left of the work's center, is apparent due to the reflected sunlight in its white walls. As the Cincinnati newspaper critic Mary L. Alexander stated in 1923, in the work "light is the principal factor. It permeates the very heart of things."
A visit to the countryside of Arques-la-Bataille reveals that Twachtman captured what he experienced perceptually rather than recording the landscape in topographically accurate terms. The river appears wider than it is in actuality. However, the trees towering over the landscape can be seen today in the countryside, consisting of old-growth beech trees that were protected due to their longevity (fig. 1).
It is interesting to consider when Twachtman might have given this painting to his old friend Duveneck. Perhaps it was shortly after 1888, when Duveneck’s beloved wife, Elizabeth Booth Duveneck, died suddenly. If so, Twachtman may have seen the painting’s elegiac mood of quiet contemplation as soothing to his bereaved friend. In 1908, Duveneck gave the painting to the Cincinnati Art Museum, remembering the friend he had lost six years earlier.
From Boyle 1979
In Springtime, as in the other pictures [Twachtman] painted during this period, he used his experience of drawing to create form rather than to describe an object: to create something according to his inner eye, his personal vision, rather than from direct observation of nature. He now favored a more even application of paint and a more diffuse overall light, with which he sought a more sensitive approach to his subject matter, more in accord with his personal point of view [p. 34].
From Pyne 1989
In Springtime, as in Arques-la-Bataille [OP.731], the two great masterpieces of this French period, Twachtman used a decorative flat surface—reminiscent of Japanese prints but especially of Whistler's Nocturnes—to express the mood of nature in repose. The planarity of the canvas is achieved through smooth, homogeneous brushwork all over the canvas and a balance of horizontals and verticals. There is a startling lack of foreground detail—only the semi-abstract contour of the river—while a similarly elegant movement of line in the background suggests the generalized shapes of trees. Cool blues and greens, subtly and tonally controlled, yield a tranquil, veiled atmosphere, and the highest point of value on the canvas, the single dab of white, represents man's presence in the landscape, a cottage nestled in to the protection of the trees above the river.
From Peters 1999
Twachtman's absorption of the lessons of Julian's and his interest in accurately recording atmospheric conditions did not, however, turn him into a painter of conventional academic works or of literal transcriptions. Instead, he used his drawing skills, not to describe natural elements, but to convey their essence through an expressive use of line and spatial juxtaposition. Thus, in Springtime (pl. 9), he did not show poplar trees with their leaves and branches, but using wispy, feathery strokes that seem only to graze the canvas, he conveyed the delicate qualities of the swaying trees as seen through a soft haze, expressing the impression he received from the subject [p. 65].
From Hartley 2008
Where the river and bank intersect in the foreground of Springtime (fig. 28), the expanses of color can switch, one moment receding into illusory distance and the next appearing as flat color upon the canvas plane [p. 81].
- Museum website (https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/explore-the-collection?id=23171005)