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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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Provenance
(Silas S. Dustin, New York);
to (Young's Art Galleries, Chicago, 1918);
Paul Schulze, Chicago, by 1923;
gift to The Art Institute of Chicago, Walter Schulze Memorial Collection, 1924;
to (Hirschl & Adler), 1986;
gift to The Fine Arts Collection of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut, 1988;
to present collection, 2001.
Exhibitions
1901–II Ten American Painters probably
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, Exhibition of Paintings, Ten American Painters, March 18–30, 1901, as Gloucester.
1918 Young's Art Galleries
Young's Art Galleries, Chicago, Paintings by Eminent American Old Masters and by Some of the Prominent Living American Artists, 1918, no. 6, p. 17 ill. in b/w, as Gloucester.
1933 Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections, June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 484, as 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. 10, pp. 68–69 ill. in color, as Gloucester.
1989 Wadsworth Atheneum
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, Connecticut Masters, Connecticut Treasures: The Collection of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, April 1–May 21, 1989, pp. 19, 54 ill. in color, 105, as Gloucester.
1997 Fleischer Museum
Fleischer Museum, Scottsdale, Arizona, East Meets West: American Impressionism, February 9–May 4, 1997, p. 83, as Gloucester.
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. 61, as Gloucester. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Literature
Art Interchange 1901–II
"The Ten Landscape Painters." Art Interchange 46 (May 1901), p. 107, as Gloucester.
New York Evening Post 1901–II
B.F. "Pictures of the 'Ten.'" New York Evening Post, March 20, 1901, p. 4, as Gloucester.
New York Times 1901–II
"The Ten Bolters: Exhibition of the Artists who Seceded from the Secession." New York Times, March 19, 1901, p. 9, as Gloucester.
Sun 1901–II
"Around these Galleries." Sun (New York), March 20, 1901, p. 6, as Gloucester.
Young's Art Galleries 1918
Paintings by Eminent American Old Masters and By Some of the Prominent Living American Artists. Chicago: Young's Art Galleries, 1918, p. 17 ill. in b/w, as Gloucester.
Clark 1919
Clark, Eliot. "John Henry Twachtman." Art in America 7 (April 1919), p. 135 ill. in b/w, as Gloucester.
Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 1925
R.M.F. "The Walter Schulze Gallery of American Painting." Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 19 (January 1925), pp. 8 ill. in b/w, 9, as Gloucester.
Captain Walter H. Schulz 1925
Captain Walter H. Schulze: The Peace Messenger, 1893-1919. Privately printed, 1925, p. 101, as Gloucester.
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. 550–51 (catalogue A, no. 204), as Gloucester. (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. 68–69 ill. in color, as Gloucester.
Spencer 1989
Spencer, Harold. "Connecticut's Art and Artists, (1880–1920)." In Connecticut Masters, Connecticut Treasures. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1989, pp. 19, 54 ill. in color, 105, as Gloucester.
Gerdts 1990–VI
Gerdts, William H. "The Ten: A Critical Chronology." In Ten American Painters, by William H. Gerdts et al. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1990. Exhibition catalogue, p. 20 ill. in b/w, as Gloucester.
Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company 1991
Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. Connecticut Masters: The Fine Arts and Antiques Collections of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company. Hartford, Conn.: The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 1991, p. 170 ill. in color, as 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. 1006 ill. in b/w (fig. 506), as Gloucester.
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. 166–167 ill. in color, as Gloucester.
Commentary

Gloucester is represented in one of the charcoal sketches that Twachtman sent to his son, Alden, to record the works he rendered in the Cape Ann town in the summer of 1900 (D.1418). At the top of the drawing, he wrote the work’s dimensions. His view here is from East Gloucester’s Banner Hill looking across the Inner Harbor to the city of Gloucester and beyond to the Outer Harbor.

As in Gloucester Harbor (OP.1403), and other works he created in Gloucester in the summer of 1900, Twachtman prominently featured the J. F. Wonson fish building; it is recognizable by the wide gable of its roof at the far left in the built forms along the shore. Here Twachtman’s vantage point was sharply downward, as he omitted the wharves lining the shore, which can be seen in images such as Gloucester Harbor, in order to focus in on buildings at the water’s edge, which appear to stand just below the lip of the hill. Painting the architectural structures with a heavy layer of dry white impasto, he turned the detached commercial buildings, used for fish processing, into what appears to be a resort in a U-shaped configuration nestled in a cove. He thus captured the way that the fishing town became a holiday destination in the summer at the turn of the twentieth century.  An 1897 publication described this aspect of Gloucester as a “land of rackets and golf clubs, summer girls, novels, and hammocks, water-color kits, and white umbrellas.”[1] 

At the right is a prominent tree, probably that featured in Wild Cherry Tree (OP.1405), its canopy of leaves obscuring the distance. Its presence exemplifies how Twachtman worked in series, using particular motifs to establish links across a group of images. 

This painting does not appear to have been included in the artist’s 1901 solo exhibitions. The probable reason is that Twachtman withheld it in order to show it, with the title of Gloucester, in the exhibition of the Ten American Painters, held March 18–30, 1901 at Durand-Ruel Galleries in New York (which opened just after Twachtman’s solo exhibition in the same venue closed on March 16). One of three works in the Ten show, the painting received notice from reviewers that establish its presence there. The Art Interchange commented that the painting had “a lot of white in it.” Similarly, the New York Times reported that Twachtman's "view of Gloucester is smashed in with great sweeps of white paint." The New York Evening Post described the painting as “a large impression of ‘Gloucester,’ which proves on examination to be one-half absolutely bare canvas,” referring to the painting's lower register, where Twachtman left a significant amount of exposed ground. The New York Sun stated: “By J. H. Twachtman there is a canvas on which are some bread thin washes of white and blue by way of sky, water and buildings and some green and yellow patches and wriggles of the brush as a child might attempt to draw trees.”

The painting seems to have remained in the artist’s family until 1918, when it was sold through Silas S. Dustin—the agent for the Twachtman estate—to Young’s Gallery in Chicago. By 1923 it belonged to Paul Schulze, president of the Schultze Baking Company in Chicago. Schulze gave it in the following year to the Art Institute of Chicago as part of a memorial collection in honor of his father Walter Schulze. The museum deaccessioned the painting in 1986. In 1988 it was purchased by the Hartford Steam Boiler Company, and in 2001, it again became part of a museum collection again when it was given by the Steam Boiler Company to the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut. 

[1] Edmund Garrett, Romance and Reality of the Puritan Coast (Boston: Little, Brown, 1897), p. 185.

Selected Literature

From Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 1925

[Gloucester has] that unity of mood, that invisibility of vision and expression which makes [Twachtman’s] work unique. High and cool in color, thinly but firmly painted, the separate elements—shore, houses, water, sky—are clearly indicated but woven into a whole that is the very essence of the scene.