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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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Keywords
OP.735
Road near Honfleur
Alternate titles: French Landscape; Landscape; Landscape near Honfleur; Paysage français
ca. 1885
Oil on canvas
30 x 21 in. (76.2 x 53.3 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman
Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection (1989.15)
Provenance
(Howard Young Gallery, New York, by 1923);
to Frederic W. Porter, Cleveland, 1923;
by descent in the family;
to present collection, 1989.
Exhibitions
1886 J. Eastman Chase's Gallery probably
J. Eastman Chase's Gallery, Boston, Paintings and Pastels by John H. Twachtman, January 19–30, 1886, no. 5, as Landscape near Honfleur.
1992 Musée d'art Américain Giverny
Musée d'art Américain Giverny, France, Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915, June 1–November 29, 1992, no. 48, p. 209 ill. in color, as Road near Honfleur.
Literature
Boston Evening Transcript 1886 probably
"Paintings and Pastels by J. H. Twachtman." Boston Evening Transcript, January 23, 1886, p. 6, as Landscape near Honfleur.
New-York Tribune 1923
"Old and New: George Inness, J. H. Twachtman and Some Others." New-York Tribune, January 7, 1923, p. 7 ill. in b/w, as Landscape.
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. 468 (catalogue G, no. 367), as French Landscape. (Hale concordance).
Gerdts 1992
Gerdts, William H. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. Evanston, Ill.: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992, p. 209 ill. in color, as Road near Honfleur.
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. 204; vol. 2, p. 720 ill. in b/w (fig. 188), as Road near Honfleur.
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. 62, as Road near Honfleur.
Spangenberg 2000
Spangenberg, Kristin. John Henry Twachtman: peintre et graveur. Musée d’Art Américain, Giverny, France, 2000. Exhibition catalogue (2000 Musée d’Art Américain, Giverny), (fig. 9), as Paysage français.
Commentary

Road near Honfleur was illustrated by Twachtman in his etching French Landscape (E.700), where the scene is not in reverse and varies from it in some respects, such as the proportions of the house and a stone wall at the left in the etching. The painting is likely to have been the work shown as Landscape near Honfleur in Twachtman's 1886 exhibition at Chase's Gallery, Boston. The critic for the Boston Evening Transcript remarked on the painting's “fine” composition and noted that “the low blue hills have a quality that can only be rendered by one who is trained or qualified by Nature to read the finest and subtlest gradations.” 

A note attached to the work's verso by the artist Elliott Daingerfield, when the painting was on view in 1923 at the Howard Young Gallery in New York, states: “I have known this canvas a long time, and it is a genuine work done in France and of the lovely green period.”

Selected Literature

From Boston Evening Transcript 1886

The last oil landscape that can be mentioned is one that shows much of Mr. Twachtman's strength and much of his weakness, the “Landscape near Honfleur”; the composition is fine, the air of course exemplary, while the low blue hills have a quality that can only be rendered by one who is trained or qualified by Nature to read the finest and subtlest gradations, and yet so slovenly and careless and without sense of former detail is the picture in execution that one compares it involuntarily with Charles H. Davis's “Village in the East,” where there was all Mr. Twachtman's truth of tones and qualities and values, and, besides, a delicacy and sweetness and truth of detail that gave the picture a quite unusual position.

From New-York Tribune 1923

In this latter upright canvas, a road winds away from the spectator, past a farm building and over a hill through the trees. The design seems casual, yet it is a design: an active pictorial purpose underlies the spontaneity of the impression recorded. It offers a little lesson in picture making.