Catalogue Entry
This work in gouache is likely to have been Winter, exhibited by Twachtman in 1893 at the American Water Color Society’s twenty-sixth annual. It was described in the New York Times as one in which “blues of open water and sky stand out against snow-clad ice and land.” The work was probably also sent that year by the artist to the World's Columbian Exposition, probably to represent his versatility in the use of a medium aside from oil.
The scene appears to depict a view along Horseneck Brook looking southeast from Twachtman’s Greenwich property. The prominent house on the hillcrest is not Twachtman's, but instead that of one his neighbor's. The roof of a second house, over the brow of the hill, is to its east.
Here Twachtman explored properties of gouache, using its hard, opaque property for the snow, while he painted with a lighter, more broken touch in the brook. In the sky, he blended color with the paper's tone to create a sense of depth.
Included in Twachtman’s 1903 estate sale, the work was among several purchased by Cottier & Company, New York.
It was probably through the firm that the work sold to the attorney, civil rights activist, and art collector, Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852–1944), of Portland, Oregon, who was a founding trustee of the Portland Art Museum and a patron of Childe Hassam. Under the work's matting, Wood inscribed the following: "white mat 4 in wide 1/2 in gold, fillet-flat." However, the mat appears to have been removed or to have deteriorated.
The was painting was subsequently sold by Macbeth to the art critic Frank Jewett Mather (1868–1953) and then descended to his grandson A. Richard Turner, chairman of the art department at Middlebury College.