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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.804
In the Woods
Alternate title: Brook in the Woods
ca. 1882–89
Oil on canvas
12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Private collection
Provenance
Probably (Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, Twachtman–Weir sale, February 7, 1889, no. 64 (as Brook in the Woods, 14 x 18 in.);
Julian Alden Weir;
to his daughter Ella Baker Weir;
to her daughter Cora Weir Burlingham;
by descent in the family to present collection.
Exhibitions
1889–I Fifth Avenue Art Galleries probably
Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, Paintings in Oil and Pastel by J. Alden Weir and J. H. Twachtman, February 1–7, 1889, no. 64, as Brook in the Woods, 14 x 18 in.
Literature
Sun 1889–II probably
"Weir and Twachtman Pictures." Sun (New York), February 8, 1889, p. 3, as Brook in the Woods.
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. 438 (catalogue G, no. 110), as Brook in the Woods. (Hale concordance).
Commentary

The catalogue for the 1889 sale of the work of Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir at the Fifth Avenue Art Galleries listed a work with the title of Brook in the Woods that measured 14 x 18 inches. Although this painting is shorter in width by two inches, it is likely to have been the work in the sale. According to the New York Sun, it sold from the auction for $45. It was probably purchased by Weir, who was its first-known owner and in whose family it still belongs.

A possibility for the work's site is Keene Valley, New York, where Weir had a summer home. In August 1882, Twachtman visited him there along with the architect Stanford White. The scene, where a log has fallen over a brook in a forest glade, is wilder than the countryside of Greenwich, Connecticut, where Twachtman settled in 1890. The painting, nonetheless, seems a forerunner of the images he would create of Horseneck Brook winding through his Greenwich property.