John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
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Catalogue Entry

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Keywords
OP.1115
Hemlock Pool
Alternate title: The Hemlock Pool
1890s
Oil on canvas
22 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (56.5 x 76.8 cm)
Signed lower right: Twacht[man]
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., Gift of John Gellatly (1929.6.140)
Exhibitions
1904 Society of Art Collectors
Society of Art Collectors, New York, Comparative Exhibition of Native and Foreign Art, November 15–December 11, 1904, no. 167, as The Hemlock Pool.
Literature
Smithsonian Institution 1933
Smithsonian Institution. Catalogue of American and European Paintings in the Gellatly Collection. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1933, p. 18, as Hemlock Pool.
Smithsonian Institution 1954
Smithsonian Institution. Catalogue of American and European Paintings in the Gellatly Collection. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1954, p. 16, as Hemlock Pool.
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. 1, p. 333; vol. 2, p. 552 (catalogue A, no. 253), as Hemlock Pool. (Hale concordance).
National Museum of American Art 1983
National Museum of American Art. Descriptive Catalogue of Painting and Sculpture in the National Museum of American Art. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983, p. 196, as Hemlock Pool.
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, pp. 393, 495; vol. 2, p. 949 ill. in b/w (fig. 436), as Hemlock Pool.
Commentary

Here Twachtman seems to have used the subject of Hemlock Pool and its surroundings mostly to explore a range of paint viscosities. He applied his pigment mixed with resin in dry layers, creating scumbled effects and letting underlayers come through where the surface paint was thinner. 

This painting belonged to John Gellatly, a friend of Twachtman’s and an important collector of contemporary American paintings. He purchased Hemlock Pool from the artist’s daughter Violet sometime before 1929 and gave it that year to the Smithsonian.

When the painting was cleaned in 1967, the last three letters in the artist’s signature were obscured.