Catalogue Entry
Twachtman depicted this painting in one of the twenty-four charcoal sketches in which he recorded paintings he created in Gloucester in the summer of 1900 (D.1403). On the work's verso, he indicated the painting’s dimensions as five-by-twelve inches and wrote "sketch," attesting to the immediacy with which he created it. The site appears to be a wharf in Rocky Neck, a peninsula extending from East Gloucester, with Gloucester across the harbor, featured also in Gloucester Wharf (OP.1439) and Fish Sheds and Schooner, Gloucester (OP.1440). A tugboat banked at the shore is visible mainly by its smokestack, its form blended into a horizontal single stroke of dark paint indicative of the presence of a pier. Twachtman brought the sketchy form of the distant shore forward along the horizon line for compositional unity.
The painting is most likely the work Twachtman titled Grinnell’s Wharf, which he included in his 1901 solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cincinnati Art Museum. Grinnell’s Wharf was also among the eleven works he sent to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. In 1903, it was included in his 1903 estate sale, in which its dimensions were listed as six-by-eleven inches. Nonetheless, no information has come to light on a wharf with this name in Gloucester. It is possible that Twachtman titled the painting for an individual associated with the locale. There is no indication on the work itself to identify its title. Yet its dimensions, the charcoal sketch after it, and that no other work matches these features confirms the titling. The painting was sold from the estate sale to Twachtman’s artist-friend Robert Reid who purchased only one other painting from the sale, August Haze (OP.920).