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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.1502
Deserted Wharf (The Old Mill at Cos Cob)
Alternate titles: Deserted Wharf; The Old Mill at Cos Cob
ca. 1891–98
Oil on canvas
24 3/16 x 20 1/16 in. (61.4 x 51 cm)
Stamped lower right: Twachtman Sale [1903 estate sale]
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Julia Morgan Marlatt (1942.122)
Provenance
(American Art Galleries, New York, Twachtman estate sale, March 24, 1903, no. 93);
to Edward A. Rorke, Brooklyn;
Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt, Cleveland;
bequest to present collection, 1942.
Exhibitions
1903–I American Art Galleries
American Art Galleries, New York, Sale of the Work of the Late John H. Twachtman, exhibition and auction, March 19–24, 1903, no. 93, as Deserted Wharf.
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. 83, as The Old Mill at Cos Cob, lent by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
1979 Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum
Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, Coshocton, Ohio, American Paintings, 1825–1915, from the Cleveland Museum of Art, July 7–November 1, 1979, as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
2001 National Academy of Design
National Academy of Design, New York, The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore, February 13–May 13, 2001. (Larkin 2001–I), as The Old Mill at Cos Cob. Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 17–September 16, 2001; Denver Art Museum, October 27, 2001–January 20, 2002.
Literature
Sun 1903–II
"Twachtman Pictures, $16,610." Sun (New York), March 25, 1903, p. 5, as Deserted Wharf.
Hale 1957
Hale, John Douglass. "Life and Creative Development of John H. Twachtman." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1957. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1958, vol. 2, p. 507 (catalogue A, no. 634), as Deserted Wharf. (Hale concordance).
Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 1973
"A Check List: American Paintings and Water Colors of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Early Twentieth Centuries in the Cleveland Museum of Art." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (January 1973), p. 34, as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
Chong 1993
Chong, Alan. European and American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993, p. 244 ill. in b/w, as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
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, p. 424; vol. 2, p. 968 ill. in b/w (fig. 468), as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
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. xxii, 177, 409 ill. in b/w (6.17), as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
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. 127, 130 ill. in color, as The Old Mill at Cos Cob.
Commentary

As identified by Susan G. Larkin, the subject in this painting is Cos Cob’s Lower Landing, consisting of warehouses along the waterfront in the town’s small harbor, near the opening to the Long Island Sound.[1] The artist’s vantage point was looking south from the millpond bridge, featured in his paintings from the porch of the Holley House. The buildings depicted include Edward Holley’s tide-powered mill in the right foreground, warehouses, and a store. The painting was completed before January 1899, when the mill burned down.

Here the shape extending from the mill is the roof of a shed that adjoined it. Larkin has revealed that the small dark shape at the center of the composition was a privy, which Twachtman gave a pivotal role in the design.

Painting from a low vantage point, Twachtman featured the receding buildings as geometrically interlocked forms, differentiating his approach from a more anecdotal view of the scene by Childe Hassam, The Smelt Fishers, Cos Cob (1896), which portrays the same site.[2]

The painting was in Twachtman’s 1903 estate sale, from which it sold to the amateur Brooklyn artist Edward A. Rorke (1856–1905), who purchased ten works from the sale.

[1] See Larkin 2001–I, p. 127 and pp. 20–21 for a description of this site.

[2]  Illustrated in Larkin 2001–I, p. 130, fig. 78.

Selected Literature

From Larkin 2001–I

Twachtman stood on the millpond bridge to paint a second view of the landing, The Old Mill at Cos Cob. Defying the expectations raised by the title, he used the eighteenth-century architecture as the basis for a composition that anticipates twentieth-century modernism. Eliminating even such basic details as doors and windows, he reduced the buildings to simple rectangles and triangles. The brushwork is pleasingly varied throughout the canvas, with long strokes for the stacked lumber and piers in the foreground, wiry yellow lines in the distance, and a tapestry of short dabs in the shimmering water. Twachtman seems to have been following his own dictum that “architecture is beautiful in a picture only when you forget it is architecture.” The abstract design challenges the viewer to identify the subject. The rendering of a traditional subject in an avant-garde manner fuses past and present in a seamless continuity [p. 127].