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
Related Work
loading
Keywords
E.301
Harbor with Barges
Alternate title: The Harbor, Bridgeport
ca. 1879–80
Etching on paper
4 7/8 x 6 11/16 in. (12.4 x 17 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Reba and Dave Williams (2008.115.4799)
Provenance
Literature
Wickenden 1921
Wickenden, R[obert] J. The Art and Etchings of John Henry Twachtman. New York: Frederick Keppel, 1921, pp. 33, 45 ill. in b/w, 48, as The Harbor, Bridgeport.
New York Times 1921–III
"The World of Art: Etchings of John Henry Twachtman." New York Times, November 13, 1921, p. BRM5, as The Harbor, Bridgeport.
Baskett 1999
Baskett, Mary Welsh. John Henry Twachtman: American Impressionist Painter as Printmaker—A Catalogue Raisonné of His Prints. Bronxville, N.Y.: M. Hausberg, 1999, pp. 62–63 ill. in b/w, as Harbor with Barges. (Baskett concordance).
Commentary

Mary Baskett writes: "An impression of this etching was found in a frame bearing a label 'Invoice No. 249, Received August 11, 1880.' The print may have been in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 'Exhibition of American Etchers' from April 11 to May 9, 1881, and/or in the Chicago Inter-Sta'te Industrial Exposition in the fall of 1880." 

As Baskett indicates, Sylvester Rosa Koehler (curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1887 to 1900), owned three impressions of this etching, which he gave to the museum in 1898. She states: "One of the Koehler impressions was printed with a fine film of ink on the surface of the plate, a technique employed by Whistler in printing his atmospheric Venetian etchings of the 1880s. Harbor with Barges has been located trimmed to the plate mark and signed by Twachtman on a small paper tab, a convention invented by Whistler for signing his Venice etchings."

This work's location can be identified as a view looking west from  Communipaw Bay in Jersey City, New Jersey, an area known as South Cove that was subsequently landfilled. This is approximately the same locale featured in The Shore  (OP.312). Twachtman's image on the plate (reversed in the print) would have concurred quite closely with the painting. In both, the church on the vanishing point is the Bergen Baptist Church, Jersey City (see The Shore, OP.312, fig. 2). Both works, along with New York Harbor (OP.303), also a view of Jersey City, include similar highrise apartment buildings dotting the shoreline, which primarily housed immigrants working in the factories and refineries in the rapidly expanding suburb of New York City. Here Twachtman's vantage point was farther away and higher than in The Shore, so that the church tower is smaller and lower in the scene and to its right, the two chimneys of the Passaic Zinc Works, Jersey City, are barely visible. It is possible that Twachtman created the etching on the spot, after designing the painting. In the painting, the prominent sailboat is close to the shore, whereas in the etching, perhaps the same sailboat has left the shore, probably obscuring St. Patrick Church, which can be seen in The Shore. 

The impression in the National Gallery of Art, illustrated here, is a lifetime print, State II. 

Lifetime states (from Baskett 1999)

I. Before short, oblique left-to-right line above mast at far left.

II. With this line. 

Selected Literature

From Wickenden 1921

A group of barges and scows form the dark repoussoir for the delicately detailed distance showing buildings of the town with masts and spars rising here and there along the docks. Smoke issuing from a stove-pipe on ground to the right, near which [printing error] a woman’s figure appears, contrasts with the squarer one of the scows [and] suggests a sharp breeze off shore, and a sail boat is just putting out, across the bay bright with the reflected light of the sky [pp. 33–34].