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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.903
Artist's Home, Greenwich, Connecticut
Alternate titles: My House; Twachtman's House
ca. 1890
Oil on canvas
15 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (39.4 x 47 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman [on the lower right are two other largely obscured signatures]
Private collection, Promised Gift to the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
Provenance
(Milch, by 1922);
(Macbeth);
Edna Spencer;
to (Milch, by 1973);
Joseph D. Tucker, 1960s or 1970s;
by descent in the family;
to (Thomas Colville Fine Art, LLC, New Haven, Connecticut), 2001);
to private collection, 2001;
to (David Henry Art, San Francisco);
to present collection, 2012.
Exhibitions
1933–II Milch probably
Milch Galleries, New York, 19th-Century American Landscape Artists, May 15–31, 1933, no. 6, as My House, lent by Macbeth Gallery.
2010 Crocker Art Museum
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, Tomorrow’s Legacies: Gifts Celebrating the Next 125 Years, October 10, 2010–January 9, 2011, as Artist's Home, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Literature
Nelson 2006
Nelson, John. "From a Personal Perspective." In John Twachtman (1853–1902): A "Painter's Painter", by Lisa N. Peters. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2006. Exhibition catalogue (2006 Spanierman), p. 11 ill. in color (fig. 5), as Twachtman's House.
Shields et al. 2010
Shields, Scott A. et al. The Crocker Art Museum Collection Unveiled, ed. Scott A. Shields. Sacramento: Crocker Art Museum, 2010, as Artist's Home, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Commentary

This is one of Twachtman's earliest views of his Greenwich home. It features the back of the house (its north facade) before the artist brought the eaves down, removed the central chimney on the older part of the home (at the left), and altered the entryway in his addition (at the right). Wedged into the hillside at the right is the grass-covered root cellar built at an early point in the home's history.  

Given that this painting must date before 1892, it was perhaps among the oils in Twachtman’s 1891 solo exhibition at Wunderlich Gallery. There it could have been Farm House or The Little White House. The former was mentioned in two reviews. A critic for the Brooklyn Eagle admired it, saying: “Farm House is rather sweet in color and has something more of the substance than most of the work; there is a sense of air in it, too.”[1] The Art Amateur commented: “summer light and color are treated with equal success in ‘The Farm-House’ and ‘The Hay Stack.’”[2] Twachtman sent the latter painting, Little White House, from Wunderlich to Paris, where it was included in the June–July 1891 exhibition of work by contemporary American artists, held at the Durand-Ruel Galleries. In a review in the New York Times that could well describe this painting, Charles de Kay praised Little White House as a work that “would be an oasis in itself, if it hung in the old Salon.”[3]

There are two largely obscured signatures in the lower right, both seemingly in the hand of the artist. The painting has a label on its verso, which reads “Milch Gallery Fine Framing.” The verso also bears the monogram of Macbeth Gallery.

[1] Brooklyn Eagle 1891.

[2] Art Amateur 1891.

[3] de Kay 1891.