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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
Middlebrook Farm, ca. 1888 (OP.819). Fig. 1. Middlebrook Farm, ca. 1970s, Wilton Historical Society, Connecticut.
Fig. 1. Middlebrook Farm, ca. 1970s, Wilton Historical Society, Connecticut.
Middlebrook Farm, ca. 1888 (OP.819). OP.819, Middlebrook Farm, detail with signature.
OP.819, Middlebrook Farm, detail with signature.
Related Work
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Keywords
OP.819
Middlebrook Farm
ca. 1888
Oil on canvas
18 1/8 x 29 1/8 in. (46 x 74 cm)
Signed lower left: J. H. Twachtman–
Private collection
Provenance
(Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, Twachtman–Weir sale, February 7, 1889, no. 60);
private collection, New Haven, Connecticut;
to (Alexander J. Brogan & Son, New Haven, Connecticut, auction sale, May 30, 1958);
to Dr. and Mrs. Robert H. Smith, Wooster, Ohio;
by descent to private collection;
to (Christie's, New York, August 7, 2020, lot 59);
to present collection, 2020.
Exhibitions
1889–I Fifth Avenue Art Galleries
Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York, Paintings in Oil and Pastel by J. Alden Weir and J. H. Twachtman, February 1–7, 1889, no. 60, as Middlebrook Farm, 18 1/2 x 29 in.
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. 23, as Middlebrook Farm, shown only in New York. Traveled to: Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut, July 13–October 29, 2006.
Literature
Art Amateur 1889–I
"The Weir and Twachtman Exhibition." Art Amateur 20 (March 1889), p. 75, as Middlebrook Farm.
Sun 1889–II
"Weir and Twachtman Pictures." Sun (New York), February 8, 1889, p. 3, as Middlebrook Farm.
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. 445 (catalogue G, no. 165), as Middlebrook Farm. (Hale concordance).
Peters 1999–I
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), p. 82, as Middlebrook Farm.
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. 124–25 ill. in color, as Middlebrook Farm.
Christie's, New York 2020
American Art Online. Auction catalogue, July 23, 2020. New York: Christie's, 2020, lot 59 ill. in color, as Middlebrook Farm.
Commentary

Middlebrook Farm was included with its current title in the 1889 sale of the work of Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir (see Exhibitions). The farm is still on Ridgefield Road in Wilton, Connecticut, four miles south of Weir’s former home in Branchville on Nod Hill Road (fig. 1). The records of the Wilton Historical Society indicate that the house—featured prominently in Twachtman’s image—was probably built in the early nineteenth century. At the time Twachtman painted the farm, its owner was Samuel Bradley Middlebrook, a member of an old Wilton family of successful farmers who had a home on the site since 1755.[1] Twachtman depicted the same farm and setting from a closer vantage point in Barn on the Hill (OP.818).

Many features that Twachtman included in the painting either remain or have been recorded as once present, including the barn situated behind the farmhouse (now a private home), the house’s wide chimney (now narrower, but evidence of a wider chimney has been recorded), and a house in the hills at the upper right (known to have once been present). In the early twentieth century, the home was extended and the shape of its chimney was narrowed. Whereas in Barn on the Hill Twachtman stood close enough to the farm to depict the stone wall beside it and other outbuildings, here his view is more detached, showing it as an isolated shape in the broader landscape.

When the painting was included in the February 1889 show and sale, a critic for Art Amateur described it as “a typical American landscape, raw, barren, and rocky, but delightful in its way as a page of description out of Hawthorne or Emerson.” [2]

[1] Information on Middlebrook Farm was courteously provided by the Wilton Historical Society, including a survey on the house from Historic Resources Inventory Building and Structures, State of Connecticut, Connecticut Historical Commission, compiled by Mary E. McCahon, architectural historian, April–May 1989, Wilton Historical Society, Connecticut.  Another source on the house is Wilton Historical Society, Eighteenth Century Dwellings in Wilton (Wilton, Conn.: Wilton Historical Society House Files, 1976).  For help in identifying this site, I would like to thank Scotty Taylor, Wilton Historical Society.