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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.972
A Summer Day
Alternate title: Summertime
1890s
Oil on canvas
27 x 30 in. (68.6 x 76.2 cm)
Signed lower right: J. H. Twachtman [signature is very faint]
Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, John Herron Fund (07.3)
Provenance
From artist's estate to present collection, 1907.
Exhibitions
1905 Knoedler probably
M. Knoedler & Co, New York, Memorial Exhibition of Pictures by John H. Twachtman, January 2–11, 1905, no. 7, as A Summer Day.
1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial probably
Portland, Oregon, Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, June 1–October 14, 1905, no. 104, as A Summer Day.
1906 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 101st Annual Exhibition, January 22–March 3, 1906, no. 242, as A Summer Day.
1906 Indianapolis Art Association
Art Association of Indianapolis, John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, Inaugural Exhibition, November 20–December 31, 1906, no. 195, as A Summer Day, purchased for the permanent collection of the Art Association.
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. 80, as A Summer Day, lent by the Art Association of Indianapolis, Herron Museum of Art.
1974 Carnegie Institute
Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Celebration, October 25, 1974–January 5, 1975, as A Summer Day.
Literature
John Herron Institute 1932
An Outline of Modern Painting in Europe and America. London: Medici Society, 1932, pp. 46 ill. in b/w, 59, as A Summer Day.
John Herron Art Museum 1951
105 Paintings: John Herron Art Museum. Indianapolis: Art Association of Indianapolis, 1951, no. 74 ill. in b/w, as A Summer Day.
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. 1, pp. 220–21 ill. in b/w (fig. 33), 226, 249, 265; vol. 2, p. 572 (catalogue A, no. 608b), as A Summer Day. (Hale concordance).
Indianapolis Museum of Art 1970
Catalogue of American Paintings: Indianapolis Museum of Art. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1970, pp. 106–7 ill. in b/w, 161, as A Summer Day.
Boyle 1979
Boyle, Richard. John Twachtman. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979, pp. 54, 72–73 ill. in color, 78, as A Summer Day.
Janson 1980
Janson, Anthony. 100 Masterpieces of Painting: Indianapolis Museum of Art. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1980, pp. 226–27 ill. in b/w, 228, as A Summer Day.
Janson 1982
Janson, Anthony. "The Cincinnati Landscape Tradition." In Celebrate Cincinnati Art: In Honor of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Cincinnati Art Museum, 1881–1981. Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1982. Exhibition catalogue, p. 23, as A Summer Day.
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. 325; vol. 2, 847 ill. in b/w (fig. 325), as A Summer Day.
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. 52–53 ill. in color (fig. 36), as A Summer Day.
Commentary

A Summer Day depicts the pond Twachtman created by damming a section of Horseneck Brook for his children’s play. Here he captures the sense of adventure felt by a child in landing a small rowboat at what Alfred Henry Goodwin described in 1905 as a place “protected by a great and ancient rock.”[1] Twachtman’s perspective is a personal one; the shore where he stands is in the foreground, conveying his presence in the scene and making him close enough to observe his child, yet far away enough to allow the child to feel independent. The rock’s soft shape seems to curve with gentle supportiveness around the child.

Another view of the pond and rock can be seen from a more detached stance in Boat at Anchor (OP.973). 

The Art Association of Indianapolis (John Herron Institute) purchased the painting from the Institute’s inaugural exhibition in 1906 (the purchase was finalized in 1907). A Summer Day is one of Twachtman’s first works to be acquired by a museum

[1] Goodwin 1905, p. 628.

Selected Literature

From Hale 1957

If we compare Summer Day with [Hassam] South Ledge . . . [Childe Hassam, South Ledges, Appledore] it will be apparent that Hassam used the Impressionist broken color and short strokes with almost scientific detachment, while Twachtman, seemingly intoxicated with the beauty of the scene before him, has painted with no such insistence on the manner of laying on his paint.  His inconsistencies in size, length, and direction of brush strokes, in contrast with those of Hassam, bespeak an excitement, modified only by an innate tendency to indicate the shapes and planes in the picture.  For example, the angle of the bank as opposed to the horizontality of the water, the curve of the boat, etc., are shown by the directional changes of the Impressionist dashes of pigment on the canvas. Added to this, however, there seems to have been a perhaps unconscious sense of abstract design that dictated the curving rhythms and the ordering of the strokes into patterns independent of, but not in opposition to, the objects in the picture. . . .If we examine the figure in the boat in Twachtman’s Summer Day, we find neither nymph nor posed model. Indeed, the boater appears to have been unaware of the artist’s presence and to have been surprised in an everyday activity. He was not dragged into the picture to fill a spot in the organization, either. He, his boat, the water, the rock and the other elements are the organization, which could not exist without them [p. 220].

From Boyle 1979

In A Summer Day the figure of the child in the rowboat is very definitely a major element in the picture, conceptually and structurally; in fact, it is the underlying concept. The idea is simple enough and borders on sentimentality and cliché. It is saved, however, by the artist’s conscious distance from it, the detachment and austerity of his approach. The simplicity of the idea is expressed in complex brushwork forming an interlocking pattern of color and tone. The curve of the boulder is echoed in the curves of the child’s back and the stern of the boat, both partially illuminated by sunlight and darkened by shadow [p. 72].