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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
View from the Arques River Valley, ca. 1884 (OP.719). Fig. 1. Detail with annotation of Carte d’état Major, ca. 1820–66 (French Ordinance Survey map created by the French Army), 1820–66, with red square indicating Twachtman's vantage point.
Fig. 1. Detail with annotation of Carte d’état Major, ca. 1820–66 (French Ordinance Survey map created by the French Army), 1820–66, with red square indicating Twachtman's vantage point.
View from the Arques River Valley, ca. 1884 (OP.719). Fig. 2. Arques River Valley, looking southwest, Arques-la-Bataille, Normandy, 2019.
Fig. 2. Arques River Valley, looking southwest, Arques-la-Bataille, Normandy, 2019.
Image: Philippe Gautrot
View from the Arques River Valley, ca. 1884 (OP.719). Fig. 3. Arques River Valley, looking southwest, Arques-la-Bataille, Normandy, 2019.
Fig. 3. Arques River Valley, looking southwest, Arques-la-Bataille, Normandy, 2019.
Image: Philippe Gautrot
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.719
View from the Arques River Valley
Alternate title: Pond in Meadow
ca. 1884
Oil on canvas
11 x 13 3/4 in. (27.9 x 34.9 cm)
Collection of John and Elizabeth Connolly
Provenance
Martha Twachtman, the artist's wife, Greenwich, Connecticut;
by descent in the family to present collection, 1986.
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. 564 (catalogue A, no. 471), as Pond in Meadow. (Hale concordance).
Commentary

This painting, which belongs to a descendant of Twachtman's daughter Marjorie, had only a descriptive title until 2019, when its site was identified, thanks to Philippe Gautrot (founder and director of the Académie Bach, Arques-la-Bataille). Its location is the Arques River Valley, near the hamlet of Martin-Église, looking southwest toward Arques-la-Bataille, the Normandy town where Twachtman spent the summer of 1884 with his family (fig. 1).

In the distance, a shape projecting upward from the hillcrest at the work's center represents the ruins of the Château d'Arques, the castle built in the eleventh century and set on a promontory high above the town (depicted in Chateau d'Arques, OP. 712). (figs. 2–3). Below it and slightly to its right is the Gothic church in the town itself (featured in Church at Arques, OP.171). Even in his small rendering of the church, Twachtman recorded some of its aspects accurately, including the great roof over the western half of the church's nave, depicted with a dark-brown square shape, while next to it, on its right, is a vertical shape representing the church's bell tower. The tower appears to almost touch the top of the hills. In the foreground is the Arques River, which Twachtman viewed from an oblique and upward angle so that it appears wider and flatter than it was in actuality. That the waterway is a river and not a lake is demonstrated in the slight curve at its upper right corner, indicating that it continues on through the valley. 

The painting suggests that Twachtman kept the castle and church in his eyesight as he wandered through the Arques River Valley. In fact, he made his awareness of their presence evident in his composition. In the work, he directs the viewer's eye from right to left, on a diagonal line from the indistinct shapes of cows in the right foreground to the church and upward to the rounded outline of the castle. He formed an opposing diagonal in the right shoreline of the river, while marking the intersection of the cross-axial design with a dark circular form, probably representing a bush, as if to reveal his own compositional decision-making in the arrangement.