ludwig mies van der rohe: John Henry Twachtman

This is part 1 of a 2-part post on the life and works of American artist John Henry Twachtman (1853 – 1902). With his penchant for winter landscapes, I thought his work would make an appropriately seasonal blog post.

Twachtman was best known for his impressionist landscapes, though his painting style varied widely through his career. He was a member of “The Ten,” a loosely-allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organisations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically unified group.Twachtman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and received his first art training there under Frank Duveneck. Twachtman then proceeded to Europe to further his education. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1875 to 1877, and visited Venice with Duveneck and William Merritt Chase.

After a brief return to America, Twachtman studied from 1883 to 1885 at the Académie Julian in Paris, and his paintings dramatically shifted towards a soft, grey and green tonalist style. During this time he painted what some art historians consider to be his greatest masterpieces, including Arques-la-Bataille, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Springtime, in the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum.


1885 Arques-la-Bataille oil on canvas 152 x 200 cm

c1884 Springtime oil on canvas 94 x 127 cm

In 1886 he returned to America and settled in Connecticut, eventually buying a farm in Greenwich. He often painted and exhibited with fellow artist Julian Alden Weir, and spent considerable time at the art colony in Cos Cob.

In addition to his oil paintings, Twachtman continued to create etchings as well as drawings in pastel. Twachtman taught painting at the Art Students League from 1889 until his death in 1902. He was close friends with Julian Alden Weir, and the two often painted together and both also had close associations with the Danish-born painter Emil Carlsen (posts on both of these artists coming up soon). In 1893, Twachtman received a silver medal in painting at the Columbian Exposition, the same year he also exhibited his work with Claude Monet at a New York gallery.

In Connecticut his painting style shifted again, this time to a highly personal impressionist technique. Twachtman painted many landscapes of his farm and garden in Greenwich, often depicting the snow-covered landscape. He executed dozens of paintings of a small waterfall on his property, capturing the scene in different seasons and times of day. Late in life Twachtman visited Gloucester, Mass., another centre of artistic activity in the late 19th century, and produced a series of vibrant scenes that anticipated a more modernist style yet to gain prominence in American art.Twachtman died suddenly aged 49 in 1902 in Gloucester of a brain aneurysm.

Note: Sizes where given have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole centimetre: