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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.971
Portrait of Elsie
Alternate title: Elise
ca. 1895
Oil on canvas
30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)
Private collection
Provenance
Martha Twachtman, the artist's wife, Greenwich, Connecticut;
by descent in the family, until 1982;
(Berry-Hill Gallery, New York, by 1982);
to present collection, 1982.
Exhibitions
1913 New York School of Applied Design for Women probably
New York School of Applied Design for Women, Fifty Paintings by the Late John H. Twachtman, January 15–February 15, 1913, no. 24, as Elise, title misspelled, should be Elsie.
Literature
Standard Union 1913
"Twachtman Exhibit." Standard Union (Brooklyn), January 16, 1913, p. 10, as Portrait of Elsie.
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. 444 (catalogue G, no. 151), as Portrait of Elsie. (Hale concordance).
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. 315; vol. 2, p. 861 ill. in b/w (fig. 345), as Portrait of Elsie.
Commentary

This painting, which the artist may have left unfinished, depicts his third child, his daughter Elsie, who was born in Cincinnati on November 2, 1886 and died from scarlet fever in Greenwich on January 13, 1895. Twachtman expressed his grief at this great loss in his Sailing in the Mist paintings (see OP.976). His decision to use a profile format for this image may have been for symbolic reasons, drawing on Renaissance memorial portraits, which were often in profile, the format itself conveying permanence in its stillness. Twachtman perhaps used this painting as the basis for the similar profile image of a red-haired child in On the Terrace (OP.963). He probably intended it there as a tribute to his red-haired daughter, using his art as a way of keeping her place within the family that had been lost in actuality.