John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
Catalogue Entry
OP.1514
View from the Holley House, Winter
Alternate titles: From the Holley House; River Scene at Cos Cob
ca. 1901–02
Oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 25 1/8 in. (63.8 x 63.8 cm)
Private collection, Houston
Image: Roz Akin
Provenance
Exhibitions
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, October 15, 1989–January 28, 1990. (Exhibition catalogue: Chotner 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Pyne 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Peters 1989–I), no. 26, p. 114 ill. in color, as View from the Holley House, Winter. Traveled to: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, March 18–May 20, 1990.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915, May 10–July 24, 1994, no. 82, pp. 75–76 ill. in color, 367, as View from the Holley House, Winter. Traveled to: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 12–May 14, 1994; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Alaska, August 21–October 30, 1994; Denver Art Museum, December 3, 1994–February 5, 1995.
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 View from the Holley House, Winter (shown only in Denver). Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 17–September 16, 2001; Denver Art Museum, October 27, 2001–January 20, 2002.
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. 66, as View from the Holley House, Winter. Traveled to: Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, July 13–October 29, 2006.
Literature
Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. Auction catalogue, December 2, 1988. New York: Christie's, 1988, lot 214A ill. in color, as River Scene at Cos Cob.
Chotner, Deborah. "Twachtman and the American Winter Landscape." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), p. 70 ill. in color (detail), as View from the Holley House, Winter.
Richard, Paul. "John Twachtman's Scenes of Silence: At the National Gallery, Meditations on the Landscape." Washington Post, October 22, 1989, p. G10, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), p. 37, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
Weinberg, H. Barbara, Doreen Bolger, and David Park Curry. American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. Exhibition catalogue, p. 75–76 ill. in color, 367, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
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, pp. 424–25, 468; vol. 2, p. 970 ill. in b/w (fig. 471), as View from the Holley House, Winter.
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. xiii, 59, 321 ill. in b/w (2.23), as From the Holley House.
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 150, 155 ill. in b/w, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
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. 81, 83 ill. in color, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
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. 50, 118–19 ill. in color, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
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. 212–13 ill. in color, 214, as View from the Holley House, Winter.
Commentary
This is the most abstract representation of the view looking east from the porch of the Holley House in Cos Cob (see Glossary of Names), capturing a wintry day of mist combined with a light snowfall.
Across the mill pond, the low horizontal structure is the Palmer & Duff shipyard, which was no longer in operation (see OP.1513, fig. 1) The two verticals that intersect with it are inactive smokestacks and their reflections in the water.
In the 2005 exhibition catalogue, American Impressionism and the Beauty of Work, Susan G. Larkin observes that for this painting Twachtman "borrowed a strategy from a print in [J. Alden] Weir's collection, Hiroshige's Fukagawa Lumberyards." She states: "Like the Japanese printmaker, Twachtman depicted a work site when activity was muted by winter. Snow seems to muffle sound in both works. Twachtman also adapted some Japanese compositional strategies. The foreground focus on the parasol in the print becomes a calligraphic swirl of paint in Twachtman's oil."