John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
Print this page
« previous // return to Works // next »

Catalogue Entry

enlarge
Additional Images
Two Boats, Newport Harbor, ca. 1889 (P.806). Fig. 1. New York Yacht Club, Sayer's Wharf, Newport, Rhode Island, ca. 1900. Newport Historical Society (P43).
Fig. 1. New York Yacht Club, Sayer's Wharf, Newport, Rhode Island, ca. 1900. Newport Historical Society (P43).
Keywords
P.806
Two Boats, Newport Harbor
Alternate titles: Boats at Wharf; Two Boats
ca. 1889
Pastel on paper
10 5/8 x 13 3/8 in. (26.9 x 33.9 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
Private collection
Provenance
Julian Alden Weir;
by descent in the family;
(Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York);
to present collection.
Exhibitions
1945 Lyman Allyn Museum
Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Connecticut, Work in Many Media by Men of the Tile Club, March 11–April 23, 1945, no. 154, as Boats at Wharf.
Literature
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, pp. 523 (catalogue A, no. 908), 585 (catalogue G, no. 523, as Boats at Gloucester), as Two Boats. (Hale concordance).
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. 257; vol. 2, p. 792 ill. in b/w (fig. 266), as Two Boats.
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. 79 ill. in b/w (fig. 39), as Two Boats.
Commentary

The site in this pastel—Sayer's Wharf in Newport—is confirmed by the roof of the New York Yacht Club Station on the upper right (fig. 1). The work was possibly among the many Newport scenes Twachtman contributed to the fourth and last exhibition of the Society of Painters in Pastel. Held in May 1890, the works included can only be identified by reviews as the show was not accompanied by a catalogue. A critic's comments in the New York Times could have been in reference to this work: "Among the twenty-nine contributions of the eighty-nine drawings not one appears to have hit the right method of using pastels better than Mr. J. H. Twachtman.  He uses paper of different shades--brownish, greenish, grayish, or pale straw, and does not elaborate and insist too much on his picture. He leaves the paper ground a good deal bare, and sketches, rather than draws, an elaborate picture."[1]

A reviewer for the Studio, probably Clarence Cook, saw Twachtman's art as a “world apart” from that of the other contributors, pronouncing: "Compared with this artist's clear vision, Corot is coarse, and Monet clumsy; yet his study is founded as firmly on reality as theirs. He seems to be of purer fire, and in his ardor to have almost touched the goal for which these other poets of the brush are striving."[2] 

[1] New York Times 1890.

[2] Studio 1890, p. 238.