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
- Locales
: - Subject matter
: - beaches »
- coastal scenes »
- dunes »
- oceans »
OP.1417
Beach at Squam
Alternate title: Sand Dunes, Annisquam
ca. 1900
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Provenance
to private collection,1996;
Exhibitions
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Works of John H. Twachtman, January 8–27, 1901, no. 3, as Beach at Squam.
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, March 4–16, 1901, as Beach at Squam.
New York School of Applied Design for Women, Fifty Paintings by the Late John H. Twachtman, January 15–February 15, 1913, no. 31, as Sand Dunes, Annisquam, lent by John E. Cowdin, Esq.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, Exhibition of Paintings, Pottery, and Glass Loaned by the Hon. Burton Mansfield of New Haven, April 13–November 1, 1920, no. 31, as Beach at Squam.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Exhibition of Paintings by American Impressionists and Other Artists of the Period 1880–1900, January 18–February 28, 1932, no. 107, as Beach at Squam, lent by Burton Mansfield.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Coast and the Sea: A Survey of American Marine Painting, November 19, 1948–January 16, 1949, no. 118, as Beach at Squam, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Williams Family.
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 85, as Beach at Squam, lent by Kraushaar Galleries, New York.
Ira Spanierman, New York, John Henry Twachtman, 1853–1902: An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels, February 3–24, 1968, no. 21, p. 16 ill. in b&w, as Beach at Squam, lent by Mr. Chris Huntington.
Cornell Fine Arts Center, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, The Genteel Tradition: Impressionist and Realist Art from the Ira and Nancy Koger Collection in Celebration of the Centennial of Rollins College, November 1, 1985–January 26, 1986, as Beach at Squam.
Spanierman Gallery, New York, Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, May 12–June 13, 1987. (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Gerdts 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Hale 1987); (Exhibition catalogue: Peters 1987), no. 14, as Beach at Squam.
Tampa Museum of Art, Florida, At the Water's Edge, December 9, 1989–March 4, 1990, pp. 31, 74 ill. in color, as Beach at Squam. Traveled to: Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida, May 4–June 17, 1990; The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, November 8, 1990–January 6, 1991.
Spanierman Gallery, New York, The Intimate Landscapes of John H. Twachtman (1853–1902), May 5–July 2, 1993, as Beach at Squam.
Spanierman Gallery, New York, Painters of Cape Ann, 1840–1940: One Hundred Years in Gloucester and Rockport, April 13–June 22, 1996, p. pp. 7 ill. in color, 8, 15, as Beach at Squam.
Greenwich Historical Society, Connecticut, The New Spirit and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After the Armory Show, October 9, 2013–January 12, 2014. (Leeds 2013), as Beach at Squam.
Literature
"A Trio of Painters: Pictures by Three Americans in Three Fifth Avenue Galleries." New York Times, March 7, 1901, p. 8, as Beach at Squam.
Valuable Ancient and Modern Paintings. Auction catalogue. May 9–11, 1916. New York: American Art Association, 1916, lot 73 ill. in b/w, as Beach at Squam.
"Twachtman Art Gets Highest Bid." New York Times, May 10, 1916, p. 13, as Beach at Squam.
Clark, Eliot. John Twachtman. New York: privately printed, 1924, between p. 58 and 59 ill. in b/w, as Beach at Squam.
American Landscapes: The Private Collection of the Late Burton Mansfield. Auction catalogue, April 7, 1933. New York: American Art Association—Anderson Galleries, 1933, lot 72 ill. in b/w, as Beach at Squam.
"Coming Auctions: American--Anderson Galleries--Mansfield Paintings." Art News 31 (April 1, 1933), p. 11, as Beach at Squam.
"The Week in Art Circles." Cincinnati Enquirer, January 17, 1937, as Beach at Squam.
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. 541 (catalogue A, no. 48), as Beach at Squam. (Hale concordance).
Boyle, Richard J. "John Twachtman's Gloucester Years." In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery, 1987. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), p. 19, as Beach at Squam.
Hale, John Douglass. "Twachtman's Gloucester Period: A 'Clarifying Process.'" In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery, 1987. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), pp. 12–13, as Beach at Squam.
Peters, Lisa N. "Catalogue." In Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900–1902, by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts. New York: Universe and Ira Spanierman Gallery. Exhibition catalogue (1987 Spanierman), pp. 76–77 ill. in color, as Beach at Squam.
Gerdts, William H. "Surf and Shore: Nineteenth-Century Views of the Beach." In At the Water's Edge. Tampa: Tampa Museum of Art, 1990. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 31, 74 ill. in color, 125, as Beach at Squam.
Weber, Bruce. Berry-Hill Galleries, American Paintings VII. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1994. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 190–91 ill. in color, as Beach at Squam.
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. 477; vol. 2, p. 997 ill. in b/w (fig. 497), as Beach at Squam.
American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. Auction catalogue, November 29, 1995. New York: Sotheby's, 1995, lot 33 ill. in color, as Beach at Squam.
Leeds, Valerie Ann. The New Spirit and the Cos Cob Art Colony: Before and After the Armory Show. Greenwich, Conn.: Greenwich Historical Society, 2013. Exhibition catalogue (2013 Greenwich Historical Society), pp. 6 ill. in color, 9, 37, as Beach at Squam.
Modern Day Auction. Auction catalogue, May 16, 2024. New York: Sotheby's, 2024, lot 132 ill. in color, as Beach at Squam.
Commentary
The subject is the desolate stretch of beach of Annisquam, on Cape Ann, near Gloucester, that artists found especially picturesque at the turn of the twentieth century. From a low vantage point, Twachtman gave a small dune a monumental presence, set off against clouds that seem almost to brush against the grass-covered hillock.
This painting is not featured among the twenty-four charcoal sketches Twachtman sent to his son Alden in which he featured paintings he had created in Gloucester in the summer of 1900. Nonetheless, it can be verified that Twachtman created it that summer, as he included it in his solo exhibitions in Chicago (January 1901) and New York (March 1901).
When it was on view at the latter exhibition, a New York Times critic described it as "a bit of water and a sand dune rising to a knoll, and a sky streaked with clouds that arrest the attention as in nature they so often do. Here the relations of greens and sand on the dunes with the forewater and the sky are preserved; there is none of the oversensitiveness that occasionally weakens a landscape."
The painting belonged to the artist’s wife until 1913 when she sold it to John Elliot Cowdin (1858–1941) and his wife Gertrude Cheever Cowdin (1863–1908). John Cowdin was a silk merchant and polo player.