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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.1112
Winter Harmony
Alternate title: Winter Scene
ca. 1892–93
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 32 in. (65.4 x 81.3 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman–
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Avalon Foundation (1964.22.1)
Provenance
Mrs. Lucius Horatio Biglow, ca. 1900, Ridgefield, Connecticut;
to her daughter, Mrs. Edward Ballard (Elizabeth), New York and Ridgefield, Connecticut;
(Coleman Auction Galleries, New York, November 15, 1963, lot 746, as Winter Scene);
to (Spanierman, 1963);
to (Vose, 1963);
to present collection, 1964.
Exhibitions
1966 Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati Art Museum, John Henry Twachtman: A Retrospective Exhibition, October 7–November 20, 1966. (Exhibition catalogue: Baskett 1966); (Exhibition catalogue: Boyle 1966–I), no. 69, as Winter Harmony, lent by the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1971 Lowe Art Museum
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, French Impressionists Influence American Artists, March 19–April 25, 1971, no. 178, pp. 57, 63 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
1971 Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Wilderness, October 9–November 14, 1971, no. 162, as Winter Harmony, lent by National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
1973 National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., American Impressionist Painting, July 1–August 26, 1973, no. 65, p. 133 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony. Traveled to: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, September 18–November 2, 1973; Cincinnati Art Museum, December 15, 1973–January 31, 1974; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, March 8–April 29, 1974.
1977 Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Turn-of-the-Century America: Paintings, Graphics, Photographs, 1890–1910, June 30–October 2, 1977, ill. in b/w (fig. 77), as Winter Harmony. Traveled to: Saint Louis Art Museum, December 1, 1977–January 12, 1978; Seattle Art Museum, February 2–March 12, 1978; Oakland Museum, California, April 4–May 28, 1978.
1989–II National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, October 15, 1989–January 28, 1990. (Exhibition catalogue: Chotner 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Pyne 1989); (Exhibition catalogue: Peters 1989–I), no. 1, p. 89 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony. Traveled to: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, March 18–May 20, 1990.
1990 Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation
Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, Villa Favorita, Lugano-Castagnola, Switzerland, Masterworks of American Impressionism, July 22–October 28, 1990, no. 28, pp. 78–79 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
1999 High Museum of Art
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist, February 26–May 21, 2000. (Peters 1999–I), no. 49, as Winter Harmony. Traveled to: Cincinnati Art Museum, June 6–September 5, 1999; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, October 16, 1999–January 2, 2000.
Literature
Coleman 1963
Auction catalogue, November 15, 1963. New York: Coleman Auction Galleries, 1963, lot 746, as Winter Scene.
Davids 1965
Davids, Ruth. "In the Museums: Museums Accessions in Painting." Antiques 88 (November 1965), p. 696 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
National Gallery of Art 1970
National Gallery of Art. American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1970, pp. 118–19 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Mellow 1973
Mellow, James R. "At the Whitney, 73 Works by American Impressionists." New York Times, September 14, 1973, p. 28, as Winter Harmony.
Boyle 1974–I
Boyle, Richard. American Impressionism. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974, pp. 62–63 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Apollo 1976
"Editorial: Problems and Pleasures of American Art." Apollo 104 (September 1976), p. 165 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Hills 1977
Hills, Patricia. Turn-of-the-Century America: Paintings, Graphics, Photographs, 1890–1910. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977. Exhibition catalogue, p. 79 ill. in b/w (fig. 77), as Winter Harmony.
Boyle 1978
Boyle, Richard J. "John H. Twachtman: An Appreciation." American Art & Antiques 1 (November–December 1978), pp. 74, 76 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Boyle 1979
Boyle, Richard. John Twachtman. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979, pp. 17, 42–43 ill. in color, 72, as Winter Harmony.
Karpiscak 1979
Karpiscak, Adeline Lee. Ernest Lawson: 1873–1939. Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Museum of Art, 1979. Exhibition catalogue, p. 19 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Boyle 1980
Boyle, Richard. "John Henry Twachtman: Tone Poems on Canvas." Antiques World 3 (December 1980), p. 69, as Winter Harmony.
Wilmerding 1980
Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. New York: Hudson Hills, 1980, pp. 158–59, 202–3 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Folk 1984
Folk, Thomas. The Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painting: An Original American Impressionism. Allentown: Kutztown, 1984, p. 41 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Boyle 1989
Boyle, Richard J. "John H. Twachtman's Mastery of Method." In In the Sunlight: The Floral and Figurative Art of J. H. Twachtman, Lisa N. Peters et al. Exhibition catalogue (1989 Spanierman), pp. 48 ill. in color, detail (fig. 34), 49, as Winter Harmony.
Pyne 1989
Pyne, Kathleen A. "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), pp. 48 ill. in color (detail), 54–55, as Winter Harmony.
Richard 1989
Richard, Paul. "John Twachtman's Scenes of Silence: At the National Gallery, Meditations on the Landscape." Washington Post, October 22, 1989, pp. G1 ill. in b/w, G10, as Winter Harmony.
Peters 1989–I
Peters, Lisa N. "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology." In John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, by Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Exhibition catalogue (1989–II National Gallery of Art), pp. 19, 27, 31, 36, as Winter Harmony.
May 1990
May, Stephen. "Twachtman at the Wadsworth Atheneum." Art Times (March 1990), p. 9 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Perlman 1990
Perlman, Bennard. "National Gallery Exhibit Shows Two Sides of the Same Subject." Baltimore Daily Record, January 17, 1990, p. A32 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Gerdts 1990–II
Gerdts, William H. Masterworks of American Impressionism. Lugano-Castagnola, Switzerland: Fondazione Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1990. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 78–79 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Gerdts 1990–IV
Gerdts, William H. "Impressionism in the United States." In World Impressionism: The International Movement, 1860–1920, ed. Norma Broude. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990, pp. 51–52 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Hiesinger 1991
Hiesinger, Ulrich. Impressionism in America: The Ten American Painters. Munich: Prestel, 1991, pp. 174–75 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Peters 1991
Peters, Lisa N. American Impressionist Masterpieces. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1991, pp. 62–63 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Pyne 1992
Pyne, Kathleen. "Resisting Modernism: American Painting in the Culture of Conflict." In American Icons: Transatlantic Perspectives on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Art, ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Heinz Ickstadt. Santa Monica, Calif.: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992, pp. 302–4 ill. in b/w, as Winter Harmony.
Peters 1995
Peters, Lisa N. "John Twachtman (1853–1902) and the American Scene in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Frontier within the Terrain of the Familiar." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1995. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 349, 410–11; vol. 2, p. 881 ill. in b/w (fig. 367), as Winter Harmony.
Larkin 1996
Larkin, Susan G. "'A Regular Rendezvous for Impressionists:' The Cos Cob Art Colony 1882–1920." Ph.D. dissertation, 1996. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microforms, 1996, pp. xxix, 237–38, 473 ill. in b/w (8.29), as Winter Harmony.
Peters 1999–I
Peters, Lisa N. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1999. Exhibition catalogue (1999 High Museum of Art), pp. 142 ill. in color, 143, as Winter Harmony.
May 2000–II
May, Stephen. "Visual Poetry: The Landscapes of John Henry Twachtman." Art & Antiques 23 (February 2000), p. 85 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Larkin 2001–I
Larkin, Susan G. The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore. New York: National Academy of Design in association with Yale University, 2001. Exhibition catalogue (2001 National Academy of Design), pp. 199–201 ill. in color, as Winter Harmony.
Butler 2019
Butler, Eliza. "John Henry Twachtman and the Materiality of Snow." American Art 33 (Fall 2019), p. 85, as Winter Harmony.
Peters 2021–II
Peters, Lisa N. Life and Art: The Greenwich Paintings of John Henry Twachtman. Cos Cob, Conn.: Greenwich Historical Society, 2021. Exhibition catalogue (2022 Greenwich Historical Society), pp. 54 ill. in color (fig. 37), 56, as Winter Harmony.
Commentary

Winter Harmony depicts Hemlock Pool, a widened, rockbound part of Horseneck Brook, to the west of Twachtman’s Greenwich home. The scene is unified by the soft layer of snow on the ground that blends into the snow-filled atmosphere. It is only gradually that the work’s wide chromatic range emerges—in the lavender of exposed rocks and the greens and russet-oranges of the reflections in the water, cast from evergreen trees and trees still bearing autumnal leaves. The viewpoint is lower than in Icebound (OP.1111) and Winter Silence (OP.1110), enabling the viewer more access to the spatial enclosure. 

This painting is possibly Hemlock Pool, which was no. 12 in Twachtman’s March 1891 Wunderlich exhibition. The New York Evening Post remarked: “In the pictures of winter scenes, effects of snow in sunlight and under gray skies, we find the artist apparently at his best. Certainly ‘Hemlock Pool,’ No. 12, a little valley or dale with bare trees growing on the sloping banks of a brook flowing down towards the front of the picture, is a charming piece of painting, delicate and tender in color and simple in method.”[1] The New York Mail and Express praised the work: “One canvas which must appeal directly to even a Philistine of the Philistines in art is the beautiful ‘Hemlock Pool.’ The exquisiteness with which its values are rendered would alone make it a great landscape painting, but there is added to it that indescribable something which is the spirit of woodland winter.”[2]

A letter in the files of the National Gallery of Art identifies this painting as Snow Landscape, a work in the inventory of Mrs. Lucius Horatio Biglow in about 1900 that was passed on at Mrs. Biglow’s death to her daughter Mrs. Edward Ballard (Elizabeth) of New York City and Ridgefield, Connecticut. Mrs. Biglow is believed to have purchased the painting directly from the artist, and it probably hung in the home called Graeloe that she and her husband, Lucius Horatio Biglow, a New York City lawyer, music publisher, and poet, bought in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1889. Lucius Biglow expanded the home and landscaped the grounds, making the residence one of the finest in Ridgefield. Along with the painting, their daughter, Elizabeth, inherited the residence, and lived there until her death in 1964, when following her bequest the house was torn down and the property given to Ridgefield, where it is today the site of Ballard Park.

A year before her death Elizabeth Ballard sold the painting at Coleman Auction Gallery in New York, which listed it with the title of Winter Scene. It was purchased by Ira Spanierman and was sold the next year by Vose Galleries of Boston to the National Gallery. At some point after the Coleman sale it acquired the title of Winter Harmony.

[1] New York Evening Post 1891.

[2] Mail and Express 1891.

Selected Literature

From Boyle 1979

If the preceding plate, Hemlock Pool (Autumn) [OP.1114], reflects the quieter aspects of one of nature’s most colorful seasons, so also does Twachtman treat the more pleasant side of winter snow. Using white as the key color, he relates all other color accents to it. By building on an underlying structure of verticals and horizontals; by a sensitive use of grays and grayish greens, browns, and blues; and by a careful balance of warm and cool tones, he makes Winter Harmony into an appreciation of the overriding silence and solitude of a winter’s day in the countryside [p. 42].

From Pyne 1989

The structures of [Twachtman’s] winter landscapes, focused on the brook on his farm (see figs. 6 and 7) or the house, succinctly confirm Twachtman’s written account of how he found comfort in the supra-refinement of nature or the work of art. Winter Harmony (fig. 8, cat. 1), for example, pulls the viewer into the picture space along lines of movement established by the V shape of the brook, the diagonals of the banks, and the vertical trees lining the banks. Characteristically in these landscapes, the placement of the horizon near the top of the canvas induces the eye to rest at the center of the composition in the mass of the brook. These quiet, intimate spaces enfold the viewer in the niche cut out by the brook and its banks and allow the viewer to find shelter there. The absorptive surface with its soft, pastellike texture also works to caress the eye, and the thin washes of opalescent cool and warm hues suffuse the observer in an oceanic atmosphere of mist and snow—a realm in which movement of tone and light is slow, gradual, and without incident.