Catalogue Entry
Looking north along Horseneck Brook is Hemlock Pool, a small rock-edged section of the brook to the west of Twachtman’s home. Despite the snow that has covered the ground in all directions, this image probably depicts a late fall snowfall: rust-orange leaves are still present on the trees and the snow is newly fallen, as it clings to the raised surfaces of rocks in the brook bed. The thin layer of ice forming on its surface suggests the brook is probably just beginning to freeze. Twachtman expressed the contemplative experience of the landscape by centering the pool in the work’s middle ground with trees forming an apselike enclosure. The simplicity of the design and the curvilinear contours of the pool evoke the vitality and clarity of an Art Nouveau graphic, turning nature into a decorative conception.
In 1977 James Yarnall wrote that this painting was the work exhibited as Ice-bound at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Second Annual American Art Exhibition in June 1889. However, this was not the case. Twachtman did not move to his Greenwich home until the winter of 1890—moreover, the painting was not called Icebound until the late 1960s. The work Twachtman exhibited at the Art Institute in 1889 was probably a painting of icebound ships; this was the subject of Snow Bound, a painting included in the February 1889 auction of his and Julian Alden Weir’s work, held at Fifth Avenue Art Galleries. That Snowbound was described as a view of “a couple ice imprisoned vessels,” in the New York Sun.[1]
When this painting was sold in November 1913 at Clarke’s Auction Rooms as part of the collection of John Forsythe (owner of a men’s clothing store in Manhattan), the New York Times reported: “A ‘Snowbound’ by Twachtman is a brook in Winter, the dark water making a distinguished pattern between white banks, and a couple of little trees with orange leaves striking life into the color.”
The painting can be seen in the background of a photograph of Twachtman home, taken after 1894. Its whereabouts between that time and 1913 has yet to be determined. By 1917 it was in the hands of Montross Gallery, from which it was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Schulze—Paul Schulze was the president of the Schultze Baking Company in Chicago. The painting was purchased that year by the Friends of American Art for the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was included in the two Century of Progress exhibitions held at the Art Institute in 1933 (fig. 1) and 1934.
[1] New York Sun 1888–II.
From Clark 1924
In the picture called “Snowbound,” the artist has chosen his theme just below his studio. Under the snow embankment of the encircling hills the running stream cuts its way, creating curious forms of white against its darker background. The painter has expressed with unassuming air and perfect simplicity the intimate charm of secluded hills and the wayward course of the unconcerned waters. The slender trees seem to have been added later. The value contrast of nature is modified, so that dark uprights shall not disturb the pristine purity of almost ethereal snow forms, but their introduction is not entirely an organized part of the composition.
John H. Twachtman in a canvas entitled Snowbound, presents a scene of penetrating beauty, a stream between deep snowy banks, slim, bare trees, a bit of warm glow here and there in underbrush, and over all the enveloping mystery of remote wintry places.
From Pyne 1989
Twachtman’s projection of the amorphous shape of the brook as an entity that is both formed and formless lends these images the possibility of a generalized Zen reading, in accordance with the late nineteenth-century popularizations of Buddhism. In Icebound, for example, the intricately swinging contours of the brook imply a ceaseless movement, a process of becoming in which new forms are constantly born from formlessness. Like the atmospheric veil surrounding it, the body of water in these landscapes is beyond objectification; it exemplifies a constant process of releasing its boundaries and transcending its former identity. In insisting on the experience of merging with this slow, nearly imperceptible movement in nature, in yielding the boundaries of the self and entering this fluid state of being, Twachtman found comfort and security in his submergence in the universal mother.
From Larkin 2001–I
For Icebound (fig. 136), [Twachtman] employed a combination often seen on Asian porcelains: blue, white, and orange. The artist exploited the snow to simplify his palette, which he reduced still further by using tones of blue for the brook, rocks, tree trunks, and evergreens. He heightened to a vivid orange the rusty brown of the leaves that cling to oaks through the winter, thus intensifying the blues by accenting them with their complementary color.
From Roberts 2011
Icebound is typical of Twachtman’s depictions of winter in its coupling of simplified form and palette with a nearly square format, which together transform what could have been a harsh scene of difficult climatic conditions into a beautiful, harmonious composition. The artist’s use of a high horizon line and scattered notes of orange in the otherwise white and blue color scheme derive from the admiration he shared with many Impressionists for Japanese art and enhance the viewer’s sense of the work’s decorative qualities [p. 113].
- Museum website (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/72801/icebound)