John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
Print this page
« previous // return to Works // next »

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Additional Images
Balcony in Winter, ca. 1901 (OP.1510). Fig. 2. Exterior view of the Holley House, ca. 1900s, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Fig. 2. Exterior view of the Holley House, ca. 1900s, Greenwich Historical Society, Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Balcony in Winter, ca. 1901 (OP.1510). Fig. 1. From: Twachtman, Player's Club, ca. March 15, 1901, to his son, J. Alden Twachtman, [Paris], private collection.
Fig. 1. From: Twachtman, Player's Club, ca. March 15, 1901, to his son, J. Alden Twachtman, [Paris], private collection.
Keywords
OP.1510
Balcony in Winter
Alternate titles: Cos Cob, Connecticut; From the Holley House; On the Balcony; Winter, Holley House, Cos Cob
ca. 1901
Oil on canvas
30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm)
Stamped lower left: Twachtman Sale [1903 estate sale]
Private collection
Exhibitions
1903–I American Art Galleries
American Art Galleries, New York, Sale of the Work of the Late John H. Twachtman, exhibition and auction, March 19–24, 1903, no. 72, as Balcony in Winter.
2006 Spanierman
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. 68, as Balcony in Winter, shown only in New York. Traveled to: Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, July 13–October 29, 2006.
Literature
Roof 1903
Roof, Katharine Metcalf. "The Work of John H. Twachtman." Brush and Pencil 12 (July 1903), p. 213, as Balcony in Winter.
New-York Tribune 1903–I
"Art Exhibitions: The Twachtman, Colman and Burritt Collections." New-York Tribune, March 21, 1903, p. 9, as Balcony in Winter.
New-York Tribune 1903–II
"Twachtman Pictures, $16,610: Former Pupils Applaud Sales of Favorite Canvases." New-York Tribune, March 25, 1903, p. 9, as Balcony in Winter.
Sun 1903–II
"Twachtman Pictures, $16,610." Sun (New York), March 25, 1903, p. 5, as Balcony in Winter.
New York Times 1903–III
"Twachtman Picture Sale." New York Times, March 25, 1903, p. 5, as Balcony in Winter.
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. 430 (catalogue G, no. 35), as Balcony in Winter. (Hale concordance).
Burke 1983
Burke, Doreen Bolger. J. Alden Weir: An American Impressionist. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983, p. 208, as Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Bolger 1990
Bolger, Doreen. "American Artists and the Japanese Print: J. Alden Weir, Theodore Robinson, and John H. Twachtman." In American Art around 1900: Lectures in Memory of Daniel Fraad, ed. Doreen Bolger. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990, pp. 20, 23 ill. in b/w, as Cos Cob, Connecticut.
Antiques 1990–I
Antiques 137 (January 1990), p. 8 ill. in color, as Cos Cob, Connecticut.
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. 482; vol. 2, p. 982 ill. in b/w (fig. 482), as On the Balcony.
Peters 2006–IV
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. 216-17 ill. in color, as Balcony in Winter.
Commentary

In mid-March, Twachtman sent a letter to his eldest son, Alden, from the Players Club in New York, telling him of his recent work: “Yesterday I painted all day looking from a window at the blizzard and it recalled the one we had at home, but not so fierce. But it was beautiful and I could not stop painting and painted until it was too dark to see and I was tired out. It seemed to be a fifty round go and I got knocked out at about the eleventh round.”[1] In the letter, he included two sketches, one of Old Holley House, Cos Cob (OP.1508) and the other portraying a balcony in winter (fig. 1). (For the dating of the letter, see the entry on Old Holley House, Cos Cob, Connecticut).  

Twachtman rendered this work from the Holley House (see Glossary of Names), probably from its lower floor, looking across the millpond. This view encompassed the railing of the porch in front of the house, the planters of evergreens, tended there by Josephine Holley and her daughter Constant, and the netting from which clematis grew in the summer, seen hanging down at either side of the building. A photograph of the porch reveals its depth and the clematis netting (fig. 2). However, it seems likely that the planters and netting were added to the painting after Twachtman sent the letter to his son, as they are not included in his sketch. In the painting, he also omitted a building that can be seen jutting into the work at the left in the drawing. 

This painting was included in Twachtman’s 1903 estate sale with its current title, and there drew notice from reviewers (see Selected literature). It was purchased from the sale by Cottier & Company, a New York department store that was also an art gallery. Its next owner was probably Macbeth Gallery, which placed a label on its stretcher bar identifying it as Winter, Holly House, Cos Cob.

[1] John H. Twachtman to J. Alden Twachtman, ca. March 1901.

Selected Literature

From New-York Tribune 1903–I

At his best . . . [Twachtman] produced work exquisite and distinguished. Witness, for example, the superb “Balcony in Winter,” with its snow covered plants, its cold but living atmosphere, its sense of intimacy with nature.

From Roof 1903

[Twachtman’s] interpretation of snow effects was particularly sympathetic.  In this posthumous exhibition there was one canvas with a foreground of piazza and the irregular lines of a frozen vine, snow-touched, that was as indefinable yet deep in its appeal as a Chopin nocturne or a Paul Verlaine verse, a picture one could never forget. 

From Peters 2006

Snow covers the balcony, but warmer temperatures had created some open water on the millpond. Against the opalescent whites tinted with pale greens and pinks, the green-blues of the planted evergreens and the gray-greens of the netting create a delicate harmony like a Whistlerian Symphony. As in his paintings of his Greenwich home, in which Twachtman delighted in showing the way that natural and man-made realms merged, here he similarly captured the way that evergreens, belonging to a wild context, had become decorative elements for a domestic space, while the clematis netting connected the house with its natural surroundings. At the same time, the painting evokes a sense of nature displaced, perhaps reflecting Twachtman’s own feeling of disconnection after he had severed ties with his home in Greenwich and while he was apart from his family.