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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Little Giant, ca. 1902 (OP.1441). Fig. 1. Booklet advertising The Harbor View Hotel (East Gloucester, Massachusetts,1904), p. 8, Northeastern University Library, Archives and Special Collections, Marjorie Bouve papers, 1892–1918) (M89): box 7.
Fig. 1. Booklet advertising The Harbor View Hotel (East Gloucester, Massachusetts,1904), p. 8, Northeastern University Library, Archives and Special Collections, Marjorie Bouve papers, 1892–1918) (M89): box 7.
Little Giant, ca. 1902 (OP.1441). Fig. 2. Henry Lathrop Rand (1862–1945), Ferry Landing at East Gloucester from Rocky Neck, May 30, 1892, Henry L. Rand Collection, Southwest Harbor Public Library, Maine.
Fig. 2. Henry Lathrop Rand (1862–1945), Ferry Landing at East Gloucester from Rocky Neck, May 30, 1892, Henry L. Rand Collection, Southwest Harbor Public Library, Maine.
Keywords
OP.1441
Little Giant
Alternate titles: Ferry at East Gloucester; Ferry Landing
ca. 1902
Oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
Private collection
Image: Roz Akin
Exhibitions
1913 New York School of Applied Design for Women
New York School of Applied Design for Women, Fifty Paintings by the Late John H. Twachtman, January 15–February 15, 1913, no. 18, as Ferry at East Gloucester, lent by Mrs. J. H. Twachtman.
1913–I Albright Art Gallery probably
Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Paintings and Pastels by the Late John H. Twachtman, March 11–April 2, 1913, no. 13, as Ferry at East Gloucester.
1966 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 89, as Little Giant, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Twachtman, Independence, Missouri.
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. 7, as Little Giant.
1993 Spanierman
Spanierman Gallery, New York, The Intimate Landscapes of John H. Twachtman (1853–1902), May 5–July 2, 1993, as Little Giant.
1996 Spanierman
Spanierman Gallery, New York, Painters of Cape Ann, 1840–1940: One Hundred Years in Gloucester and Rockport, April 13–June 22, 1996, pp. 6 ill. in color, 8, 14, as Little Giant.
2006 Spanierman
Spanierman Gallery, New York, John Twachtman (1853–1902): A "Painter's Painter," May 4–June 24, 2006. (Nelson 2006); (Parkes 2006); (Peters 2006–I); (Peters 2006–II); (Peters 2006–III); (Peters 2006–IV), no. 62, as Little Giant, shown only in New York. Traveled to: Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, July 13–October 29, 2006.
2006 Bruce Museum of Arts and Science
Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut, American Impressionism: The Beauty of Work, September 24–January 8, 2006. (Larkin 2005), no. 24, as Little Giant.
Literature
Boston Herald 1902–III
"Twachtman and Friends at East Gloucester: Studio Where His Fatal Illness Began and Summer Headquarters of Other Artists." Boston Herald, October 26, 1902, p. 49.
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, pp. 446 (catalogue G, no. 167), 550 (catalogue A, no. 201), as Ferry at East Gloucester. (Hale concordance).
David Findlay 1985
On the Spot: American Painting, 1865–1930. New York: David Findlay Jr., 1985. Exhibition catalogue, ill. in color, as Little Giant.
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. 12, as Little Giant.
Peters 1987
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. 62–63 ill. in color, as Little Giant.
Antiques and the Arts Weekly 1993
"At Spanierman Gallery: The Intimate Landscapes of John H. Twachtman." Antiques and the Arts Weekly, May 14, 1993, p. 65 ill. in b/w, as Little Giant.
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. 485; vol. 2, p. 1001 ill. in b/w (fig. 501), as Little Giant.
Peters 1999–I
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 165 ill. in color, 166, as Little Giant.
Larkin 2005
Larkin, Susan G. American Impressionism: The Beauty of Work. Greenwich, Conn.: Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, 2005. Exhibition catalogue (2006 Bruce Museum of Arts and Science), pp. 120–21 ill. in color, as Little Giant.
Peters 2006–IV
Peters, Lisa N. "Catalogue." In John Twachtman (1853–1902): A "Painter's Painter", by Lisa N. Peters. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2006. Exhibition catalogue (2006 Spanierman), pp. 202–3 ill. in color, as Little Giant.
Commentary

Featured in this painting is a coal-driven Gloucester ferryboat, named Little Giant, that was built of timber-yard scrap in 1878. The ferry ran from 6:30 am until 6:30 pm, making a round trip every twenty minutes between Parkhurst’s Wharf, at the head of Gloucester Harbor, and Rocky Neck Marine Railways, with a stop at which the boat only slowed down (as it appears here) at Robinson’s Landing in East Gloucester.[1] With two cabins—a ladies’ forward and a gentlemen’s aft—Little Giant afforded a refreshing trip across the water. Such a journey was far more pleasant than the alternative of encircling the harbor much more slowly on a bumpy road in a dusty omnibus.[2] Little Giant was converted to a tugboat in 1917 and her last trip was in 1925, when she was crushed between two larger tugs in Boston harbor.

Twachtman painted this in the summer of 1902, when he resided at the Harbor View Hotel in East Gloucester, occupying a small detached cottage over the water that also served as his studio (see OP.1445, figs. 2–3). The view would have been readily accessible to him from the hotel; an image of the pier from Twachtman’s viewpoint, in fact, appeared in a booklet advertising the hotel in 1904 (fig.1). An albumen print taken in 1892 by the amateur photographer Henry Lathrop Rand depicts the boat at the dock as well (fig. 2).

The painting's date is confirmed by its absence from Twachtman’s four 1901 solo shows. It was also not among the twenty-four charcoal sketches he created after works he rendered during the summer of 1900. A further indication of the 1902 date is reflected in an article in the Boston Herald in October 1902, written by a friend of the artist (as yet unidentified) who had spent the summer with him in Gloucester. The author stated of Twachtman: "he had started two important canvases this year, one of the ferry landing at Gloucester and the other of the Harbor View House, with the great elm tree in front of it, from the end of the long pier. This was the last canvas upon which he worked.”[3] The latter work was Harbor View Hotel and Little Giant is presumably the work mentioned here as a view of a “ferry landing.”

In Little Giant, Twachtman captured the slow movement of the ferry, in the stillness of the vessel's reflections and its soft, semi-blurred form, especially the canopy over its top deck. Perhaps he could see the ferry approach from his studio windows. An untitled painting of 1908–9 by the artist John F. Stacey (1859–1941) appears also to depict Little Giant with the Gloucester shore visible as the opposite shore. 

The painting remained in the collection of Martha Twachtman after her husband’s death. She lent it to the two shows of Twachtman’s work held in 1913, in New York City and Buffalo, with the title Ferry at East Gloucester. The painting was inherited by the artist’s son Godfrey, who still owned it in 1966, when he lent it to the Twachtman retrospective at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

[1] Information on the history of Little Giant was provided by Stephanie Buck, Librarian/Archivist, Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester, Massachusetts, in a letter of February 24, 2006.  The boat’s construction history is noted by Charles Rodney Pittee, Steamship Historical Society of America, “Ferry Boat Little Giant was Once Potent Factor in Gloucester Transport, Gloucester Daily Times, March 25, 1950, clipping file, Cape Ann Historical Association, and in John Lester Sutherland, Steamboats of Gloucester and the North Shore (Charleston, S.C., 2004, appendix III.

[2] Larkin 2005, p. 120, quotes a description of this omnibus ride, which derives from Joseph E. Garland, Boston’s North Shore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 316.

[3] Boston Herald 1902—III.