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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
Holland, ca. 1881 (OP.604). Fig. 1. John Ferguson Weir, The Artist at Work, Alblasserdam, Holland, oil on canvas, 18.3 x 25.7 in., location unknown.
Fig. 1. John Ferguson Weir, The Artist at Work, Alblasserdam, Holland, oil on canvas, 18.3 x 25.7 in., location unknown.
Holland, ca. 1881 (OP.604). Fig. 2. Vincent van Gogh, Cottages, November 1883, oil on canvas, 35.4 x 55.7 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
Fig. 2. Vincent van Gogh, Cottages, November 1883, oil on canvas, 35.4 x 55.7 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
Keywords
OP.604
Holland
Alternate titles: Near Alblassadam; Near Alblasserdam
ca. 1881
Oil on panel
15 x 23 in. (38.1 x 58.4 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman
Private collection
Provenance
D. Beekman;
to (Babcock, 1952);
to Hudson Walker, as of 1953;
by descent in the family, 1959;
to (Spanierman, 1994);
to present collection, 2000.
Exhibitions
1882–I Society of American Artists probably
Kurtz Gallery, New York, Fifth Annual Exhibition, Society of American Artists, April 6–May 6, 1882, no. 113, as Near Alblassadam.
1882 Chicago Inter-State probably
Art Hall, Chicago, Ninth Annual Fine Art Exhibition, Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago, September 6–October 21, 1882, no. 33, as Near Alblasserdam.
1883 Portland Society of Art probably
Portland Society of Art, Oregon, 1883, as Near Alblasserdam.
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. 13, as Holland, lent by Mr. Hudson Walker, New York.
1982 Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C., The Hague School and Its American Legacy, April 19–June 11, 1982, no. 18, as Holland. Traveled to: Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 1982.
Literature
Chicago Tribune 1882 probably
"Art in Chicago." Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1882, p. 22, as Near Alblassadam.
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. 458 (catalogue G, no. 270), as Holland. (Hale concordance).
Art Journal 1972
Art Journal 31 (Spring 1972), p. 333 ill. in b/w, as Holland.
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. 662 ill. in b/w (fig. 117), as Holland.
Commentary

On their honeymoon in Dordrecht in the summer of 1881, John and Martha Twachtman were joined by the Weir brothers, Julian Alden and John Ferguson, in July, and this painting depicts the same site as in the latter's The Artist at Work, Alblasserdam, Holland (fig. 1). Twachtman's image is, therefore, also a view of Alblasserdam, a village located ten kilometers north of Dordrecht. In fact, the artist at work in Weir's image may, indeed, be Twachtman.

Holland is most likely the painting Twachtman exhibited as Near Alblasserdam in the Society of American Artists annual in April–May, 1882 and in the Inter-State Exposition, Chicago, in September–October, 1882. A label on the work's verso, in the artist's hand, indicates that it was also exhibited at the Portland Society of Art (Oregon) and then returned to him at 80 East Washington Square in New York.

This painting features a "post mill," a type of early European windmill, in which a roundhouse is raised on an upright vertical support. In the work, Twachtman emphasized the largeness of the mill, which towers above the landscape with its blades set off against the full extent of the sky. Its scale contrasts with a small community of homes that seem sunken into the earth, their roofs almost resting on the ground. Such an effect was captured as well by Vincent Van Gogh, who also spent time in Dordrecht in 1881. In Cottages, 1883 (fig. 2), Van Gogh featured similar dwellings to which he referred in a letter to his brother Theo as “human nests.” He stated: "I now really must go bird’s nesting with a number of variations of these ‘people’s nests’, which remind me so much of the nests of wrens — that’s to say, paint them."[1]  The two artists were like-minded in their appreciation of the way that the Dutch people lived in such close contact with nature. Although it is unlikely perhaps Twachtman and Van Gogh crossed paths in the orbit of Mauve, Van Gogh's cousin-in-law and under whose guidance he created his first paintings, in oil and watercolor, in 1881. 

[1] Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh,” Letter 411, in The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 3 volumes (New York: Bulfinch, 2000), vol. 2, p. 386.