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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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Additional Images
Landscape with Houses and Stream, 1881 (OP.600). Fig. 1. detail from letter, Twachtman, Cincinnati, to Julian Alden Weir, March 5, 1882, Weir Family Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
Fig. 1. detail from letter, Twachtman, Cincinnati, to Julian Alden Weir, March 5, 1882, Weir Family Papers, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
Landscape with Houses and Stream, 1881 (OP.600). Verso: OP.400, Landscape with Houses and Stream, showing labels.
Verso: OP.400, Landscape with Houses and Stream, showing labels.
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.600
Landscape with Houses and Stream
Alternate title: A Dutch Farm
1881
Oil on panel
10 x 15 3/4 in. (25.4 x 40 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: J. H. Twachtman 81
The Rhoda and David Chase Art Collection LLC
Provenance
Given by the artist to George H. Clements;
to (Babcock);
to James Patton, by 1929;
(Sotheby's, New York, May 28, 1987, lot 221);
to present collection, 1987.
Exhibitions
2002 New Britain Museum
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut, Rhoda and David Chase and Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear: A Family Collects, October 19, 2001–February 3, 2002, no. 66, as Landscape with Houses and Stream.
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. 443 (catalogue G, no. 150), as A Dutch Farm. (Hale concordance).
Sotheby's New York 1987
Important American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture. Auction catalogue, May 28, 1987. New York: Sotheby's, 1987, lot 221 ill. in color, as Landscape with Houses and Stream.
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. 145; vol. 2, p. 664 ill. in b/w (fig. 119), as A Dutch Farm.
Seibels 2002
Seibels, Cynthia. Rhoda and David Chase and Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear: A Family Collects. New Britain, Conn.: New Britain Museum of American Art, 2002. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 27 ill. in color (fig. 17), 34, 93, as Landscape with Houses and Stream.
Commentary

In a letter Twachtman sent from Cincinnati to Julian Alden Weir on March 5, 1882, he drew a quick sketch of this painting (fig. 1). Marking the day as the one in which his first child (his son John Alden) was born, he asked for Weir's help in exhibiting his art in New York. In the letter, he wrote that he had first put the painting with “the red-roofed” houses in a “fancy frame, but it did not suit,” and went on to note: "The frame in which the red roofs now are seems to suit it quite well but if you think another frame would be better for it let me know. The red roofs and the small landscape in the same kind of frame I should like to put good prices on."[1] (The work is not presently in its original frame.)

However, somewhat confusingly, he went on to indicate that the painting in his sketch was of a work that “it would be good” for him to keep. From this, it seems that this painting may have been returned to him.

The painting is one of three, along with Canal Scene, Holland (OP. 601) and Landscape (OP.602), that are similar but also quite different. In this scene, a narrow waterway recedes gradually beside trees in a grouped mass at the right. In the distance, the red roofs of a farm come forward in the composition under a well-lit sky of cumulus clouds. 

According to the American artist George Clements, who visited Twachtman in Dordrecht during Twachtman's 1881 honeymoon, this was among the works Twachtman showed to the Hague school painter Anton Mauve for him to critique. Clements, the painting's first owner, stated in a letter to Babcock Galleries, dated January 19, 1928: "The Twachtman is evidently a Dutch farm. Twachtman told me he showed it to Mauve. T. and I hired a rowboat in Holland to facilitate painting and maybe he gave me the picture then or later in Paris, when he invited a number of us to choose what of his collection we wanted."[2]

[1] John H. Twachtman to Julian Alden Weir, March 5, 1882.

[2]  Hale 1957, vol. 2, p. 443.