Catalogue Entry
Twachtman indicated in a letter he sent on September 22, 1895 to William Wadsworth (who funded his trip to Yellowstone), that he looked forward to visiting the Lower Yellowstone Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.[1] This painting and Lower Falls of Yellowstone (OP.1304) were the result. Here he appears to have propped his canvas over the rocks, cropping the scene more closely than in Lower Falls of Yellowstone, but still looking down on the falls (fig. 1). The spontaneity of his paint handling indicates his rapid recording of the scene, and he accentuated the dramatic contrast between the blue-green river flowing unsuspectingly through the canyon on a gradual descent and the sudden drop of the water over the edge of the cliff as it plummets with ferocity—and what have must been deafening sound—over the steep rock walls. Twachtman captured how the brilliant sunlit pinks and yellows in the rocks were reflected in the whites of the rushing movement of the falls.
The first owner of this painting was the real estate magnate and art collector Samuel T. Shaw (1861–1945), who funded yearly prizes at many New York clubs and organizations and knew many artists in Twachtman's circle, such as Theodore Robinson. Shaw perhaps purchased the canvas directly from Twachtman.[2] In the sale of Shaw's collection in 1926, this painting was titled Hemlock Pool, even though articles that year referred to it as Waterfall, Yellowstone and the subject is clearly the latter rather than the Hemlock Pool on Horseneck Brook in Greenwich. In 1957, Hale catalogued the work as Waterfall, Yellowstone. However, after the painting entered the collection of Joseph Hirshhorn in 1959, it began to be known by a combined title of Hemlock Pool: A Waterfall. At the time Hirshhorn lived in Greenwich, and perhaps he wished the painting to be a Greenwich subject. It seems likely that the use of "Hemlock Pool" for the work in the Shaw collection had simply been an error that became perpetuated. The site is along the Northern Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, west of Lookout Point (fig. 1). Twachtman cropped the composition severely making the falls a shape of its own interlocked into the arrangement. He painted in an animated sketch-like manner to express the force of the cascade with the movement of his brush.
[1] John H. Twachtman to William A. Wadsworth, September 22, 1895.
[2] Shaw is mentioned in several entries in the diary of Theodore Robinson. Frick Art Reference Library, New York.