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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Cos Cob, ca. 1890–98 (OP.1500). Fig. 1. David Bush Tide Mill and Warehouses, looking south, Cos Cob, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Fig. 1. David Bush Tide Mill and Warehouses, looking south, Cos Cob, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Cos Cob, ca. 1890–98 (OP.1500). Fig. 2. Rear view of the Lower Landing, Cos Cob, before 1899, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Fig. 2. Rear view of the Lower Landing, Cos Cob, before 1899, Archives, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Cos Cob, ca. 1890–98 (OP.1500). Fig. 3. Photograph, captioned "A Good Point of View," from Alice M. Lovett, "Art Out of Doors," The Churchman 72 (August 31, 1895), p. 237.
Fig. 3. Photograph, captioned "A Good Point of View," from Alice M. Lovett, "Art Out of Doors," The Churchman 72 (August 31, 1895), p. 237.
Cos Cob, ca. 1890–98 (OP.1500). Fig. 4. Photograph, captioned "An Everyday Scene," from Alice M. Lovett, "Art Out of Doors," The Churchman 72 (August 31, 1895), p. 237.
Fig. 4. Photograph, captioned "An Everyday Scene," from Alice M. Lovett, "Art Out of Doors," The Churchman 72 (August 31, 1895), p. 237.
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.1500
Cos Cob
ca. 1890–98
Oil on canvas
21 x 26 in. (53.3 x 66 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Private collection
Provenance
(Milch);
to Mrs. George Dominick, Greenwich, Connecticut, by 1957;
by descent in the family;
to (Spanierman, 1986);
to present collection, 1986.
Exhibitions
1928 Milch probably
Milch Galleries, New York, An Important Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, March 12–24, 1928, no. 2, as Cos Cob.
2001 National Academy of Design
National Academy of Design, New York, The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore, February 13–May 13, 2001. (Larkin 2001–I), as Cos Cob. Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 17–September 16, 2001; Denver Art Museum, October 27, 2001–January 20, 2002.
Literature
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. 546 (catalogue A, no. 133), as Cos Cob. (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. 424; vol. 2, p. 969 ill. in b/w (fig. 469), as Cos Cob.
Larkin 1996
Larkin, Susan G. "'A Regular Rendezvous for Impressionists:' The Cos Cob Art Colony 1882–1920." Ph.D. dissertation, 1996. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microforms, 1996, pp. xxii, 176–77, 408 ill. in b/w (6.16), as Cos Cob.
Larkin 2001–I
Larkin, Susan G. The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore. New York: National Academy of Design in association with Yale University, 2001. Exhibition catalogue (2001 National Academy of Design), pp. 126–28 ill. in color, as Cos Cob.
Commentary

This view is across the millpond to Cos Cob’s Lower Landing, lined with warehouses, stores, and the tide-powered mill, which burned to the ground in January 1899. The mill, built about 1763, is the tall building at the far right. In the work, a sailboat and an empty rowboat and their reflections create a continuous directional movement through the work, accentuated by the forward tilt of the picture plane. 

This site is depicted in two archival photographs, one from Twachtman's perspective in this scene (fig. 1) and another showing a rear view of the Lower Landing (fig. 2).[1] The location is also featured in photographs in an article by Alice M. Lovett, published in the Churchman in August 1895.[2] In the article, Lovett, a Brooklyn artist who studied with Twachtman in Cos Cob, described his summer school and outdoor teaching methods. In the illustration, captioned "A Good Point of View" (fig. 3), a female student sits before an easel with the Lower Landing facing her across the water and the Holley House in the left distance; according to Lovett, the male student approaching at the left, with a bare canvas in hand, is "deliberating as to the respective merits of right and left views."[3] The photograph captioned "An Every-Day Scene" (fig. 4) features a second student at her easel, painting the view, while one approaches, palette in hand. Both students are in long dresses and wear elaborate flowered hats. 

Lovett wrote a second article about Twachtman's class, which was published a few weeks earlier in the Brooklyn Standard. In it, she wrote: "Mr. Twachtman constantly recommends simplicity of arrangement and advises against confused and overcrowded canvases. He seems to keep a clear idea of the previous work of each pupil, and adapts his instruction to each."[4] His own view of the Lower Landing was no doubt instructive to his students in this respect. In a second view of this site, The Lower Landing, Cos Cob Harbor (OP.1501), he treated it more reductively, creating equivalency between buildings and their reflections. 

[1]Information on the Lower Landing is from Larkin 2001–I, pp. 20, 125–34.

[2] Lovett 1895–II.

[3] Lovett 1895–II, p. 237. 

[4] Lovett 1895–I.

Selected Literature

From Larkin 2001–I

Twachtman is shown criticizing a student's sketch of the landing in a photograph taken before the fire in January 1899 that destroyed the mill and the two warehouses closest to it (see fig. 22). He chose the same vantage point, the Palmer & Duff Shipyard for his own painting Cos Cob (fig. 75). Here, the artist, who had once criticized a student's sketch of a building for excessive detail, eliminated architectural minutiae. With a swipe of his brush, he melded the ramshackle sheds that clung to the back of the warehouses.  He unified the structures in a buttery yellow far different from their actual mustard-painted and weathered-gray siding, then doubled them in an iridescent reflection tinged with rosy pinks. Although this uniform coloration was factually inaccurate, it expressed the cohesion of a closely knit community. The expanse of shimmering water that claims more than half the composition announces the hamlet's maritime character, while the rowboat moored midway between the observer and the landing is the perfect painterly metaphor for change. A fisherman's dinghy appropriated for visitors' recreation, it is rendered in two licks of a loaded brush.

Twachtman's Cos Cob is similar to his Waterfront Scene--Gloucester [OP.1412]. Both oils depict a cluster of commercial buildings on a New England waterfront.  In both, the artist eliminated detail, emphasized the geometric structure of the architecture, and used color to unify his composition. The emotional content of the two paintings is very different, however. Neither includes a figure, but two rowboats and a sailboat suggest the human presence at the Lower Landing.  The scale of the Cos Cob buildings is small, domestic, and inviting; their counterparts in Gloucester are sprawling, industrial and forbidding. The warm-hued buildings and their brilliant reflections in Cos Cob convey a sense of well-being in contrast to the somber grays, mauves, and black in the Gloucester work [pp. 126–27].