John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné
An online catalogue by Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D., in collaboration with the Greenwich Historical Society
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Keywords
P.829
Landscape
ca. 1888–95
Pastel on pumice paper, mounted on cardboard
14 x 17 5/8 in. (35.6 x 44.7 cm)
Signed lower right: JHT
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund (25.107.2)
Exhibitions
1989 Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Revivals and Revitalizations: American Pastels in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 17, 1989–January 14, 1990, as Landscape.
1999 Montclair Art Museum
Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, American Tonalism: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum, September 19, 1999–January 2, 2000, as Landscape.
Literature
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. 540 (catalogue A, no. 979), as Landscape. (Hale concordance).
Hazzi 1989
Hazzi, Jacqueline. "Landscape." In American Pastels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Doreen Bolger et al. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, pp. 70 ill. in color, 71, 222 ill. in b/w, as Landscape.
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. 269; vol. 2, p. 822 ill. in b/w (fig. 298), as Landscape.
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, p. iii, 71, 324 ill. in b/w (3.2), as Landscape.
Avery and Fischer 1999
Avery, Kevin J., and Diane P. Fischer. American Tonalism: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum. Montclair, N.J.: Montclair Art Museum, 1999. Exhibition catalogue, pp. 18, 25 ill. in color, 39, as Landscape.
Commentary

Leaving much of the toned paper exposed, Twachtman used a delicate, painterly touch to imply the scale and contours of a flat countryside, viewed from eye level, which provided him with an unimpeded view to the far horizon. In his depiction of a stone wall on a diagonal, and its shadow, he defined the gentle rise of the land in the foreground, an expanse within the composition that is almost equal to the distance. 

Selected Literature

From Avery and Fischer 1999

In his Landscape (plate 10) done around 1890, Twachtman, like a Japanese painter with ink, floats in the upper half of the sheet a few crayon marks suggesting grassy dunes, a few scrub pines, the distant horizon and the sky, evolving a composition that progresses subtly from lower left foreground to upper right background. As in Whistler's pastels, the paper support itself assumes the conceptual mass of terrain [p. 18].

Hazzi 1989

In Landscape color and form are reduced to the essentials, and the simple scene is made significant by the way it is seen and rendered. The undulating hills slowly lead the eye to a clump of trees and after a pause, into the water, which is barely visible in the distance. The generalized light and the suggestion of a moist atmosphere create soft, almost blurred contours. Working in a limited palette and using the color of the paper, Twachtman suggests the shapes of trees and hills with rapid lines and delicate strokes of pastel [p. 71].