Catalogue Entry
Twachtman created this portrait of his wife Martha in 1881, the year of their marriage. In the Renaissance tradition of the "marriage portrait," he depicted his wife in a frontal, bust-length view. He sensitively captured her pensive sidelong and alert gaze and her long auburn hair, falling over her shoulders to establish a triangular frame for the figure. In the work, Martha wears a simple black dress with a straight white neckline, perhaps reflective of her education at a school run by the Ursuline convent. Although Twachtman may have created the portrait as a personal memento, he exhibited it in his 1885 exhibition at J. Eastman Chase's Gallery, Boston. Although it was not listed in the catalogue, the comments of a reviewer for the Boston Daily Advertizer indicate its presence:
The head of a woman is beautifully painted, and of a rare quality. The close modeling of the countenance is a marvel. The surfaces are treated with a caressing tenderness, such as the old Dutchmen must have bestowed upon choice heads. The face shows the perfection of finish without niggling. The brown hair falling to the shoulders is rendered in a masterly way. Strange to say, the bust and arms are not modelled at all, and thus form the least satisfactory portion of the work. While nothing could exceed the modesty, the subtlety, and the retiring as most of the best works of art and of nature are, it still invites study and lures the departing visitor back again and again with something like sorcery.
The painting appears also to have been in Twachtman's short solo show at the Art Students League in 1888, as the one portrait on view. The painting’s date is affirmed by its frame. The Renaissance tabernacle style frame, with fluted columns, carved garlands, and scrollwork, was created by the architect Stanford White as a wedding gift.
After the Twachtman family moved to Greenwich in 1890, the artist designed a shelf projecting from the living room's fieldstone mantelpiece to display the painting. This can be seen in a photograph in the Greenwich Historical Society archives (fig. 1). Twachtman appears to used this image of his wife as the model for the woman featured in his only poster design (I.932), created originally in pastel. The poster was used as an announcement for Harold Frederic's 1896 book, The Damnation of Theron Ware, or Illumination.