John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
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Provenance
Mitchel Work, until 1958;
(Babcock);
to Robert Phillip;
to an unidentified educational institution in the eastern United States;
(Ronald G. Pisano, Inc., New York);
(Spanierman);
to Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Rubin, 1988;
to (Debra Force Fine Art, New York, 2023);
to present collection, 2023.
Exhibitions
1901 Columbus Art School
Columbus Art School, Ohio, Exhibition of Paintings by John Twachtman, February 1901, as View from East Gloucester.
1901 Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Works of John H. Twachtman, January 8–27, 1901, no. 22, as View from East Gloucester.
1901–I Durand-Ruel
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, March 4–16, 1901, as View from East Gloucester.
1901–I Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, Exhibition of Sixty Paintings by Mr. John H. Twachtman, Formerly Resident in Cincinnati, April 12–May 16, 1901, no. 56, as View of East Gloucester.
1987 Spanierman
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. 6, pp. 60–61 col. ill. in color, as View from East Gloucester.
2023 Debra Force Fine Art
Debra Force Fine Art, New York, Selected Works, May 1–June 28, 2023, as View from East Gloucester.
Literature
Chicago Times Herald 1900
"Exhibitions of the Week." Chicago Times Herald (December 30, 1900), part 4, p. 7, as View from East Gloucester.
Columbus Journal 1901
"Twachtman’s Painting—To Be Exhibited at Mr. Fauley’s Studio Next Week." Columbus Journal (Ohio), January 27, 1901, as View from East Gloucester.
Hale 1987
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), p. 13, as View from East Gloucester.
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. 488; vol. 2, p. 1005 ill. in b/w (fig. 505), as View from East Gloucester.
Commentary

This view from East Gloucester’s Banner Hill, rendered on a medium-sized wood panel, is represented in one of the charcoal sketches that Twachtman sent to his son Alden in the fall of 1900 (Alden was in Bemis, Maine, from June through September of the year), after paintings he rendered in Gloucester in that summer (D.1408). The painting is close in its imagery to the drawing, but the dimensions indicated in the latter, below the squared off sketch, of "8 x 16" do not match the painting. Twachtman—who noted the width first—could have made an error in the work's measurements or the drawing was meant to represent a somewhat larger version of the same scene.

It is, nonetheless, clear that this painting was rendered in the summer of 1900. It can be presumed to be the work with its current title included in Twachtman’s 1901 exhibitions in Chicago (January), Columbus, Ohio (February), and Cincinnati (April–May). In a review of the Chicago exhibition, a critic for the Chicago Times Herald described View from East Gloucester as “full of charm and the very breath of summer.”

In the work, Twachtman again featured the wide gable of the J. F. Wonson fish building (see Gloucester Harbor, OP.1403) and a long pier to its east that he used as a diagonal to divide the picture plane. At the same time, the vertical line of a telephone pole establishes the foreground. Twachtman did not include the telephone pole in his charcoal sketch, giving more emphasis to pier and fish building.