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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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Keywords
OP.951
Winter Landscape
Alternate titles: The Old Mill in Winter; Winter
ca. 1890–95
Oil on canvas
25 1/2 x 32 in. (64.8 x 81.3 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman–
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, The Lunder Collection (2013.276)
Provenance
(Babcock);
to Horatio Seymour Rubens, New York, ca. 1920;
to (Milch, ca. 1945–ca. 1949);
C. C. Gibson, San Francisco, 1949–by 1957;
Vanderbilt Family, New York;
(Vose);
(Christie's, New York, May 22, 1991, lot. 254);
to (David Findlay Jr., Fine Art, New York, 1991);
to Peter Lunder, 1996;
gift to present collection, 2013.
Exhibitions
1942–I Babcock
Babcock Galleries, New York, Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels by John H. Twachtman, February 9–28, 1942, no. 9, as Winter.
1949 Milch
Milch Galleries, New York, Paintings by John H. Twachtman, November 14–December 3, 1949, no. 10, as Winter.
1993 Spanierman
Spanierman Gallery, New York, The Intimate Landscapes of John H. Twachtman (1853–1902), May 5–July 2, 1993, as Winter.
2013–14 Colby College Museum of Art
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, July 13, 2013–June 8, 2014. (Lunder 2013), as Winter Landscape.
Literature
Clark 1921
Clark, Eliot. "The Art of John Twachtman." International Studio 72 (January 1921), p. lxxxvi ill. in b/w, as The Old Mill in Winter.
Art Digest 1942
"The Serene, Quiet Beauty of Twachtman's Art." Art Digest 16 (February 15, 1942), p. 15 ill. in b/w, as Winter.
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, p. 560 (catalogue A, no. 408), as The Old Mill in Winter. (Hale concordance).
Christie's, New York 1991–II
Important American Paintings of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. Auction catalogue, May 22, 1991. New York: Christie's, 1991, cover (detail), ill. in color, lot 254 ill. in color, as Winter Landscape.
Lunder 2013
Lunder, Peter H. et al. The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College. Waterville, Maine: Colby College Museum of Art, 2013. Exhibition catalogue (2013–14 Colby College Museum of Art), ill. in color, as Winter Landscape.
Commentary

This painting was illustrated in Eliot Clark’s 1921 article as The Old Mill in Winter. However, the scene depicts a view looking north from the artist’s second-floor Greenwich studio toward the Twachtman family barn. At the left, a sinuous line joins the outline of the root cellar, adjacent to the artist’s home, with the hillside that faced it. Taking a more extreme downward angle on the scene than in Barn in Winter (OP.949), Twachtman’s view is more directly toward the path leading from the house to the barn, where the snow has cleared so that the walkway appears carved between the snow banks on either side. The outline of the barn and the shed behind it are distinct on a day of pale sunlight. 

The painting first belonged to Horatio Seymour Rubens (1869–1941), a lawyer who advocated the liberation of Cuba from Spain. It was probably sold from Rubens’s estate to Babcock Gallery, where it was exhibited as Winter in 1942. It was exhibited with the same title at Milch Galleries in 1949.