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The site depicted can be identified as a view looking west along the Communipaw Bay in Jersey City, New Jersey, an area known as South Cove because it was south of Jersey City (although it was the northern part of Communipaw Cove). (South Cove was subsequently landfilled.) The area was close to the city's train station and a short distance from the ferry depot, where Twachtman would have disembarked on traveling from New York City across the Hudson River.
In the painting's left distance is St. Patrick Church, Jersey City, consecrated in 1877 (fig. 1). To its right are two chimneys belonging to the Passaic Zinc Works, in the Lafayette section of Jersey City (in operation 1854–1901). Farther to the right is the spire of the Bergen Baptist Church, Jersey City, organized in 1870 (and constructed between 1871 and 1890) (fig. 2).[1] An 1887 Jersey City atlas shows the proximity of the two churches (figs. 3-4). In a painting dated 1887 Colonel Samuel H. Lockett (1837–1891) depicted the three structures as seen looking west on the Morris Canal, where it passed an inlet near Van Horne Street (fig. 5).
Twachtman contrasted the view from a quiet section of the shore where a fisherman's shack is over the water, a rowboat moored below it, with the sprawling suburb, stretching along the waterfront into the distance. The area's rapid growth in the 1870s was observed by the French visitor, Emile de Damseaux, who wrote of viewing it from a steamer in Voyage dans l'Amerique du Nord): "The right bank is congested with the houses that form an extension of 'Jersey City,' all made of wood and adorned with balconies and 'verandas.' They are all built on top of each other and have very little garden-space, for everyone wants a house with a river-view and space is at a premium. Most of the larger buildings are 'Boarding Houses' where several families live together and fancy themselves living in the country."[2]
Twachtman's image of an industrialized riverfront recalls the depictions of the Thames rendered by James McNeill Whistler in the early 1860s, such as Gray and Silver: Old Battersea Reach, 1863 (Art Institute of Chicago). Despite tonal palettes, both images are in the Impressionist spirit, depicting modern life from grounded perspectives using sketchlike brushwork.
Twachtman again depicted this site in the etching Harbor with Barges (E.301) (the etching is in reverse), with the Bergen Baptist bell tower on the horizon line. However, in the etching, Twachtman's angle was farther away and higher, so that the chimneys of the Zinc Works are barely visible, while St. Patrick Church may be obscured by the prominent sailboat. Perhaps it is the same boat as in The Shore, but in the etching it has moved out onto the water.
The Shore was probably the work Twachtman exhibited as South Cove, Jersey at the 1879 Cincinnati Industrial Exposition and in 1880 at the National Academy of Design, where its price of $100 was listed in the catalogue. The painting on view was described in a review in the New York Herald as “a sterling riverside study.”[3]
[1] Thanks are due to John W. Beekman, Jersey City Free Public Library, for help in the identification of this site.
[2] Emile De Damseaux, Voyage dans l’Amerique du Nord (Paris, 1878), translated by Leona T. Van Zandt, in Roland Van Zandt, Chronicles of the Hudson: Three Centuries of Travelers’ Accounts (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1971), pp. 294–95.
From Art News 1928–I
Repose and quiet, beautiful tones, characterise the painting by Twachtman. The mellow colors of the buildings are under the light of a sky of warm gray, with the sail boat and the water of the harbor toning in. The quiet, rich quality of this color is continued in the red roofs of the light-colored buildings, and in the deeper tones of the old sheds. It is an example of the masters in American painting.
- Museum website (http://collection.sdmart.org/Obj495?sid=6463&x=23359)