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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Keywords
OP.1411
Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses
Alternate titles: Red Houses; Red Houses, Gloucester; The Red Houses
ca. 1900
Oil on canvas
25 3/16 x 25 3/16 in. (64 x 64 cm)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, The James W. and Frances Gibson McGlothlin Collection (L2015.13.62)
Exhibitions
1901 Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Works of John H. Twachtman, January 8–27, 1901, no. 23, as The Red Houses.
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. 54, as Red Houses.
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. 19, as Red Houses, Gloucester, lent by Mrs. J. H. Twachtman.
1919 Dallas Art Association
Dallas Art Association, Adolphus Hotel, First Annual Exhibition: Contemporary International Art, November 18–27, 1919, no. 93, as Red Houses.
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. 86, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Twachtman, Independence, Missouri.
1968 Spanierman
Ira Spanierman, New York, John Henry Twachtman, 1853–1902: An Exhibition of Paintings and Pastels, February 3–24, 1968, no. 24, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses, lent by Rita and Daniel Fraad.
1985 Amon Carter Museum
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, American Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Collection of Rita and Daniel Fraad, May 24–July 14, 1985, no. 20, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
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. 18, pp. 41, 84–85 ill. in color, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
1999 High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, February 26–May 21, 2000. (Peters 1999–I), no. 59, pp. 162–63 ill. in color, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
2005 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Capturing Beauty: American Impressionist and Realist Paintings from the McGlothlin Collection, May 19–September 18, 2005, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses, pp. 42-43 (essay by David Park Curry).
2010 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, American Art from the McGlothlin Collection, May 1–July 18, 2010, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
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. 461 (catalogue G, no. 307), as Red Houses. (Hale concordance).
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. 84–85 ill. in color, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
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. 478; vol. 2, p. 998 ill. in b/w (fig. 498), as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
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. 162–63 ill. in color, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
Sotheby's New York 2004–II
American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. Auction catalogue, December 1, 2004. New York: Sotheby's, 2004, lot 26 ill. in color, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
Rawles and Oliver 2015
Rawles, Susan J., and Christopher C. Oliver. The James W. and Frances Gibson McGlothlin Collection of American Art, A Promise Fulfilled. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2015, pp. 86–87, as Gloucester, Fishermen's Houses.
Commentary

This painting is featured in one of the twenty-four charcoal sketches that Twachtman created to record the work he rendered in Gloucester in the summer of 1900 (D.1420). He sent the sketches to his son Alden, who was in Bemis, Maine, in the Rangeley Lakes region from late June through September. On the drawing representing this painting, he wrote “red house, 25 / 25.” This notation identifies the work as Red Houses, a painting thus titled in the artist’s 1901 exhibitions in Chicago and Cincinnati. 

Although Twachtman executed the painting in the alla prima method typical of his Gloucester period art (and recalling the style of his Munich period), he used an uncharacteristically heightened palette that seems to consist mostly of blends of alizarin and gray. The painting exemplifies his freer and more expressive use of color at the end of his career. He expressed this view at the time of his 1901 exhibition in Chicago, when he stated to a reporter that color "is not in art a vigorous reflection of either light or shade in nature, but a key in which the painter writes his music."[1]

The scene appears to depict the attached homes of Gloucester's Portuguese immigrant community. At the right, a stairway leads up to a second-floor entry. To its left, laundry hangs from what appear to be a few different lines. In its forthright depiction of a subject drawn from contemporary life, the painting anticipates the scenes of tenements portrayed by the Ashcan School later in the decade.

[1] Chicago Times Herald 1900.