John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
Catalogue Entry
OP.1137
Waterfall, Blue Brook
Alternate titles: Water Fall; Waterfall
Late 1890s
Oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30 1/16 in. (63.8 x 76.4 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Exhibitions
St. Botolph Club, Boston, Exhibition of Paintings by J. H. Twachtman and His Son, J. Alden Twachtman, February 26–March 13, 1900, no. 2, as Water Fall.
Cincinnati Museum Association, Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels by J. H. Twachtman and His Son Alden Twachtman, April 6–May 13, 1900, no. 1, as Water Fall.
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, March 4–16, 1901, as Waterfall.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Exhibition of Sixty Paintings by Mr. John H. Twachtman, Formerly Resident in Cincinnati, April 12–May 16, 1901, no. 1, as Waterfall, owned by Cincinnati Museum Association.
Buffalo Department of Fine Arts, New York, Exhibition of Fine Arts, Pan-American Exposition, May 1–November 2, 1901, no. 771, as Waterfall.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Seventy-First Annual Exhibition, January 20–March 1, 1902, no. 127, as Waterfall, loaned by Cincinnati Museum Association.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Special Exhibition of Former Cincinnati Artists, April 7–23, 1923, as Waterfall.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition of Work by Teachers and Former Students of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, November 27, 1937–January 2, 1938, no. 149, as Waterfall.
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Artists of the Past, January 16–April 19, 1942, no. 84, as Waterfall.
Phillips Gallery, Washington, D.C., Paintings by Twachtman, Weir, and Lawson, Summer 1953, no. 34, as Waterfall.
Edwin Watts Chubb Library Art Gallery, Athens, Ohio, American Painting, 1804–1954, May 1–June 15, 1954, as Waterfall.
Marquette University, Brooks Memorial Hall, Milwaukee, Festival of American Arts, April 22–May 3, 1956, no. 71, as Waterfall.
National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., American Landscape: A Changing Frontier, April 28–June 19, 1966, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 53, p. 26 ill. in b/w, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Ira Spanierman, New York, John Henry Twachtman, 1853–1902: An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels, February 3–24, 1968, no. 15, as Waterfall, Blue Brook, lent by the Cincinnati Museum Association.
Cincinnati Art Museum, The Golden Age: Cincinnati Painters of the Nineteenth Century Represented in the Cincinnati Art Museum, October 6, 1978–January 13, 1979, no. 291, pp. 107-108, 199 ill. in b/w, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, October 15, 1989–January 28, 1990. (Exhibition catalogue: Chotner 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Pyne 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Peters 1989–I), no. 21, p. 109 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook. Traveled to: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, March 18–May 20, 1990.
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, A Nation's Legacy: 150 Years of American Art from Ohio Collections, January 19–March 15, 1992, no. 48, as Waterfall, Blue Brook. Traveled to: The Isetan Museum, Tokyo, April 9–May 5, 1992; The Yamaguchi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan, May 12–June 21, 1992; The Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan, June 27–August 2, 1992; The Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Japan, August 7–September 6, 1992; Daimaru Museum Umeda, Osaka, Japan, September 23–October 5, 1992.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, February 26–May 21, 2000. (Peters 1999–I), no. 21, as Waterfall, Blue Brook. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut, Life and Art: The Greenwich Paintings of John Henry Twachtman, October 19, 2022–January 22, 2023. (Peters 2021–II), no. 18, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Literature
"Art Notes." Boston Daily Advertiser, February 27, 1900, p. 8, as Waterfall.
"At the Art Museum, Cincinnati." Greenwich Graphic, April 21, 1900, p. 5, as Waterfall.
Caffin, Charles H. "The Picture Exhibition at the Pan-American Exposition, Concluded." International Studio 15 (December 1901), p. xxxvi, as Waterfall.
Knaufft, Ernest. "Art at the Pan-American Exposition: First Paper: Landscapes." Churchman 84 (August 10, 1901), p. 179, as Waterfall.
Meakin, Lewis Henry. "Letter to the Editor, Re: Cincinnati Museum and American Art." American Art News 4 (December 25, 1909), p. 4, as Waterfall.
"The Week in Art Circles." Cincinnati Enquirer, July 11, 1915, p. 58, as Waterfall.
Born, Wolfgang. American Landscape Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948, p. 185 ill. in color, as Waterfall.
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. 1, p. 250–51 ill. in b/w; vol. 2, p. 576 (catalogue A, no. 684), as Waterfall, Blue Brook. (Hale concordance).
Carter, Denny and Bruce Weber. The Golden Age: Cincinnati Painters of the Nineteenth Century Represented in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1979, pp. 107–8, 199 ill. in b/w, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), p. 36, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
May, Stephen. "Twachtman at the Wadsworth Atheneum." Art Times (March 1990), p. 9, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Schwendenwien, Jude. "Twachtman: A Painter of Landscapes." Hartford Courant, May 6, 1990, p. G6, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
May, Stephen. "Visual Poetry: The Landscapes of John Henry Twachtman." Carnegie Magazine 60 (January–February 1991), pp. 35 ill. in color, 38, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Corn, Alfred. "John Henry Twachtman: A Soft Roaring." Antiques 141 (September 1992), pp. 45–46 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Prebus, Cynthia H. "Transitions in American Art and Criticism: The Formative Years of Early American Modernism, 1895–1905," Ph.D dissertation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, The State University, 1994, p. 492, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
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, pp. 273, 380; vol. 2, p. 924 ill. in b/w (fig. 410), as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
May, Stephen. "John Twachtman: An American Impressionist." Antiques and the Arts Weekly (December 3, 1999), p. 70 ill. in b/w, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 93, 96 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
May, Stephen. "Expressing the Inexpressible." American Artist (February 2000), p. 24 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
May, Stephen. "Visual Poetry: The Landscapes of John Henry Twachtman." Art & Antiques 23 (February 2000), p. 86 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Aronson, Julie. The Cincinnati Wing: The Story of Art in the Queen City. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum in association with Ohio University Press, 2003, p. 159 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Connors, Thomas. "Connecticut Idyll: How the American Impressionist John Henry Twachtman Made Fairfield County His Own Personal Giverny." Antiques 178 (November 2021), p. 98 ill. in color (fig. 9), as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Peters, Lisa N. Life and Art: The Greenwich Paintings of John Henry Twachtman. Cos Cob, Conn.: Greenwich Historical Society, 2021. Exhibition catalogue (2022 Greenwich Historical Society), pp. xii ill. in color, 90 ill. in color (fig. 76), 91–92, 105 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Peters, Lisa N. "The Greenwich Paintings of John Henry Twachtman." American Art Review 33 (Fall 2021), pp. 78 ill. in color, 79, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
"Current and Coming: Delayed Debuts in LA and Greenwich." Antiques 179 (November-December 2022), p. 34 ill. in color, as Waterfall, Blue Brook.
Commentary
Along with The Waterfall (OP.1138),The Cascade (OP.1139), and Falls in January (OP.1140), Waterfall, Blue Brook belongs to a series in which Twachtman depicted Horseneck Falls from a close vantage point, bringing the enlarged forms of water and rocks close to the picture plane and capturing the subject’s changing surface patterns and light effects as seen at different times of day. Here the light seems to be that of late afternoon, creating a more intense contrast of sunlight and shadow and warm and cool tones than in the more sunlit The Waterfall.
The painting was exhibited as Water Fall in the show of the artist’s oils and pastels and paintings and drawings by his son, Alden, held at St. Botolph Club, Boston, in February–March 1900. When a much smaller version of the show was sent on to the Cincinnati Art Museum, it was purchased for $400 by the Cincinnati Art Museum, representing the only sale of one of Twachtman’s paintings to a museum during his lifetime.[1] The museum promptly started lending the work out, sending it to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 and the annual of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1902. When it was exhibited in Buffalo, the critic Charles Caffin observed that of Twachtman’s four works on view “the best without much doubt is the Waterfall, owned by the Cincinnati Museum Association. It is fine in color and renders truthfully the babbling movement of the water.”
[1] The price is mentioned in Meakin 1909.
External Links
- Museum website (cincinnatiartmuseum.org)