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Based on the red estate sale stamp on this painting and its dimensions, it was the work included in Twachtman’s 1903 estate sale as Upland Pastures. As was the case for many of the paintings in the sale, its purchaser was a fellow artist: the painter George Frederick Munn (1852–1907), who was known for reductive and refined landscapes and floral imagery.[1] By 1932 the painting belonged to Robert C. Vose, who lent it to an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that year with the title of November Haze, but it is possible that it was in the hands of Vose Galleries as early as November 1919, when the gallery included a work with the title of October Haze in a Twachtman exhibition.
[1] On Munn, see Margaret Crosby Munn and Mary R. Cabot, eds., The Art of George Frederic Munn (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1916). Munn also purchased a watercolor, Village Inn, from the Twachtman estate sale.
At first glance, this painting seems composed entirely of misty undifferentiated forms. Gradually, however, the view begins to materialize, as we become aware of the hillock rising from the rocky, terrain in the right foreground, while beyond, a dip in the land may indicate the presence of a pond. Farther, the land curves upward at a gradual pitch, its upper reaches fading into the atmosphere in the distance. The general topography suggests that Twachtman might have painted it from the hill to the west of his home, looking southeast toward the pond in which his children enjoyed their small sailboats [p. 168].