Catalogue Entry
That Twachtman exhibited this painting often indicates that he felt it to be among his most important works. It is also one of his largest, bringing the viewer into close contact with the encrusted snowbank, where Horseneck Brook has begun to thaw and rocks and bare ground have resurfaced from a heavy ground cover. Twachtman’s vantage point looks north from the west side of his Greenwich home.
In 1992 photographs were discovered revealing that this painting was included in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where it was shown as Brook in Winter (fig 1).[1] This suggests that it was probably also the work with this name exhibited a year earlier in the National Academy of Design annual. The New York Times commented that in it “one seems to feel the light, flocculent drifts among the trees.”
The painting was again shown as Brook in Winter in the Ten American Painters exhibitions of 1900 in New York and Boston. A reviewer for the Art Amateur noted: “None of our landscape-painters surpasses J. H. Twachtman in subtle delineation of atmospheric effects and values generally; qualities well represented on this occasion in ‘The Brook in Winter’ and ‘The Hemlock Pool.’ In both the broad and rugged aspects of the scene are faithfully reproduced, and then stealing over all is the suggestion of suspended animation, the still torpor of winter. They are canvases of remarkable beauty and most superior accomplishment.”
In the next year, the painting was one of Twachtman's contributions to the 1901 annual of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The Boston Evening Transcript reported: “Mr. Twachtman sends two phases of the same brook, one a pool in a little gorge, the other where it emerges into meadows. With the utmost sketchiness, these give a convincing feeling of winter, in the snowbound edges of the brook, the shivering reflection of some slender birches, and the ground broken by crystals of frost.”
A year after Twachtman’s death, the work’s title was changed to February, probably to distinguish it from the artist’s many titles with the words winter or brook. It was first shown as February in 1903, when it was among five works that represented Twachtman posthumously in the Ten exhibition at Durand-Ruel Galleries. At the time of the show there was speculation that the Metropolitan Museum of Art might purchase the painting. Commenting that it was “by odds the best landscape” on view, the New York Daily Tribune reported: “The ‘February,’ by the way, has been talked of as a suitable picture to represent Twachtman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it is to be hoped that something may be done to place it there. It is valued at $5,000 and there ought not to be any difficulty in arranging for its purchase. A fund for the purpose might be raised by subscription.”
Nonetheless, this plan did not come to fruition, and the painting remained in the artist’s estate. In late 1906 the agent for the estate, Silas S. Dustin, offered it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Early in the next year the museum decided to purchase it, but negotiated the price down from the initial offering. After conferring with Twachtman’s wife and his friends Julian Alden Weir and Thomas Dewing, Dustin accepted the offer on behalf of the estate. As he noted to J. R. R. Coolidge, temporary director of the museum in 1907: “Twachtman’s friends have been most earnest in their desire that ‘February,’ a masterpiece should be owned by your Museum, and are very happy to know that it has found its permanent home there.”[2]
Although the museum almost did not purchase February due to its “high” price, within seven years, the painting was considered of such importance to the museum that it turned down the request of December 1914 from Mrs. Twachtman to loan it to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in order to show it in the museum’s new galleries, set to open the following winter. The painting was known as February until its original title was restored in 1993.
[1] See Rydell and Carr 1993, pp. 143, 332.
[2] Silas S. Dustin, New York, to J.R.R. Coolidge, temporary director, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January 12, 1907, Curatorial Archives, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
From New York Sun 1892
J. H. Twachtman and J. Alden Weir are represented in impressionist excursions in which their adventures have had some share of success. Mr. Twachtman’s [B]rook in Winter, No. 180, has in fact, a very fine feeling and is to be counted among the best things that he has exhibited.
From Studio 1892
Of Mr. Twachtman’s [Brook in Winter], we have already spoken; but we must not leave it without again expressing our pleasure in its picturesque composition; the solid way in which the ground is built up, and the tacky, broken surface of the hillside felt under veiling snow; we almost hear the tinkling laughing of the little brook, the animate soul of the scene . . . Of the three pictures, we feel that this is the most individual. The materials of the landscape are the most commonplace: the artist has found them at his own door; yet so much is made of them. . . . The pictures of Mr. Palmer and Mr. Wyant are far more conventional than that of Mr. Twachtman, both in their choice of subject and their treatment of it; the artists have known how to tame the Academic formulas to the service of poetry.
Mr. Twachtman, in his two winter scenes, especially in No. 180, “Brook in Winter,” stands between Mr. Weir and Mr. Tarbell. Like the former he has the intuitive gift and gets at the heart of his subject and like the latter he has an active sense of form. . . . The spring exhibition is always bound to contain a number of winter pictures and one of the most interesting features this year is formed by three or four more than ordinarily successful works of the sort. The spirit underlying their uncommon truth and beauty is the spirit of freedom and personal investigation. With Mr. Twachtman, in his “Brook in Winter,” and with Mr. Parish, whose “Winter Sunset--Cape Cod,” makes one of the strongest attractions of the corridor, it works, roughly aggressively. With Mr. Tryon it works with greater subtlety but no less surely, the values in his curious color scheme are preserved with as much delicacy as force. Every one of these pictures presents a strong contrast to the kind of snow study that was popular not so very long ago and that still lingers here and there, the study that would perhaps better not be called a study, for it is based on the blind acceptance of Nature in her winter garb as offering a model in monochrome. The observant man knows better, is familiar with the grays, blues and purples that lurk in shadowed places, with the pinks and yellows that spring from under brilliant sunlight, and the observant artist transfers these fugitive hues to his canvas. Moreover, in order to increase the interest of his picture he is not afraid to give it texture by skillful brushing. . .
Rarely have so many beautiful landscapes of Winter appeared in one exhibition as may be found at the Academy now. The Corridor is particularly favored, but there is a brace of Winter scenes in the East Room worth noting namely, Mr. John H. Twachtman's “Brook in Winter,” where one seems to feel the light, flocculent drifts among the trees . . .
From Derby 1893
In considering the contents of Gallery 5, it was interesting to turn from this wintery landscape [Robinson] to another study of nature in its frigid aspect, similar yet widely differing—the “Brook in Winter “ (1012), by J. H. Twachtman It is so much colder and drearier than Mr. Robinson's conception, and the spot impresses one as being far from any human habitation, while in the former picture the houses clustered on the hillside suggest companionship and the genial warmth of sociability. In [Robinson's] "Winter Landscape" the patches of earth are revealed by the melting rays of the sun, while in the canvas by Mr. Twachtman it is the whirling wind that has bereft the rocks of their snowy covering and fills the air with the icy crystals. The brook is frozen, the bare trees shiver, the air is hazy with floating particles of snow and the distance shows coldly blue. The dreariness, the solitariness of the scene appeal to one with melancholy force. One fancies that the artist was all alone when the picture was painted, that a feeling of desolation, of remoteness from life and warmth and fellowship stole into his heart, and that his fingers grew very cole as he held the brushes and rendered on canvas with such intensity the character of the spot.
From Boston Evening Transcript 1901–I
Mr. Twachtman sends two phases of the same brook, one a pool in a little gorge, the other where it emerges into meadows. with the utmost sketchiness, these give a convincing feeling of winter, in the snowbound edges of the brook, the shivering reflection of some slender birches, and the ground broken by crystals of frost.
From de Kay 1918
[The painting is] a winter song from his own Greenwich bailiwick. . . . Now of our many painters of winter few if any have touched the snow with such delicacy and sweetness as Twachtman. Notably the pictures alluded to above, like the "February" painted on the home acres at Greenwich, Connecticut, have this intimate and delightful touch. He preferred the soft winter day before a thaw when the snow does not crackle under foot but lies in thick almost moist masses on the land, clings to the branches of tree and bush, tops the old weeds that rise high above the white levels.
From Clark 1924
The picture of snow in the Boston Museum entitled “February” is conceived within an oblong proportion. Here again we have the simple relation of neutral hues and an even diffused light without shadows or contrasts. A brook winds below undulating fields of snow, above which evergreens stand against a clouded sky. The surface quality is produced by heavy underpainting, over which the trees are not altogether happy, overcrowding the center of the composition and allowing the eye to run out of the undecorated area at the right. The rocky embankment across the stream is splendidly constructed, and the sense of intricate forms among the trees where the brook descends is effectively suggested. The subject, seemingly unpictorial, has through intimate appreciation become imbued with vital significance.
From Tucker 1931
In the large picture that tends to dominate the room in which it hangs in the Boston Museum, how solid is the ground under the caressing snow, how secure, how vital the fir trees standing in the frozen world, and all given too you with restrained compact design, without a superfluous dot [p. 9].
- Museum website (collections.mfa.org)