John Henry Twachtman - part 2

This is part 2 of a 2-part post on the works of American artist John Henry Twachtman. For biographical notes and more works by Twachtman see part 1.

c1893 Last Touch of Sun 
oil on canvas 63 x 76 cm

c1894 Niagara Falls 
oil on canvas 76 x 64 cm

1895 Haystacks at Edge of Woods 
pastel 24 x 36 cm

c1895-1900 Snowbound 
oil on canvas 56 x 76 cm

c1895-1900 In the Garden 
oil on canvas 76 x 64 cm

c1895 In the Greenhouse 
oil on canvas 64 x 41 cm

c1895 The Emerald Pool 
oil on canvas 64 x 64 cm

c1895 The White Bridge 
oil on canvas 77 x 52 cm

c1897-9 Azaleas 
oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm

c1897-1899 Snow Scene at Utica 
oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm

c1900-02 Aboard a Steamer 
oil on panel 37 x 24 cm

c1900-02 Deserted Wharf (The Old Mill at Cos Cob) 
oil on canvas 62 x 51 cm

c1900 Gloucester Harbour 
oil on canvas 64 x 64 cm

c1900 Hemlock Pool 
oil on canvas 76 x 64 cm

c1900 My Summer Studio 
oil on canvas 77x 77 cm

c1901 Country House in Winter, Cos Cob 
oil on canvas 64 x 64 cm

c1901 October 
oil on canvas 76 x 76 cm

Branchville, Connecticut 
etching

Country Path 
oil on canvas 38 x 53 cm

Footbridge, Bridgeport, Connecticut 
etching

Horseneck Falls 
oil on canvas 76 x 64 cm

Landscape oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm

Snow Scene 
oil on canvas 42 x 51 cm

Venice 
etching

Woman on the Quay, Honfleur 
etching

John Henry Twachtman - part 1

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.

n.d. Winter 
oil on canvas 55 x 66 cm

1879 Oyster Boats 
oil on canvas 42 x 61 cm 

c1879-82 Miami River, Cincinnati 
etching 10 x 13 cm 

1880 Storm Clouds 
oil on canvas 32 x 52 cm

1881 Canal Scene, Holland 
oil on panel 25 x 33 cm

c1881-3 Dordrecht 
etching 12 x 17 cm

c1881-3 Evening, Dordrecht 
etching 12 x 19 cm

c1881 The Inlet 
oil on canvas 36 x 50 cm

1882 Snow Scene 
oil on canvas 31 x 41 cm

c1882 An Early Winter 
oil on canvas 43 x 36 cm

c1884-9 French Landscape 
etching

c1889 At Newport 
etching 20 x 30 cm

c1889 Connecticut Shore, Winter 
oil on canvas

c1889 Icebound 
oil on canvas 64 x 77 cm

1890-1900 The Brook, Greenwich, Connecticut 
oil on canvas 64 x 89 cm

c1890-1900 Figure in Sunlight (Artist's Wife) 
oil on canvas 66 x 54 cm

c1890-1900 Old Holley House, Cos Cob 
oil on canvas 64 x 64 cm

c1890-1900 Round Hill Road 
oil on canvas 77 x 76 cm

c1890-1900 Winter Harmony 
oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm

1890's Late Summer 
oil on canvas 76 x 132 cm

c1893 Frozen Brook 
oil on canvas 76 x 56 cm

A tribute to Ronald Searle

Here is a short tribute to the artist Ronald Searle, who died 30 December 2011 aged 91.
Ronald Searle was born in Cambridge in 1920 and was educated there at the Cambridge School of Art. On the outbreak of the Second World War he left his studies to serve in the Royal Engineers and in 1942 was captured by the Japanese at Singapore, then held by them for three and a half years. He is a hugely successful graphic artist and pictorial satirist.

As well as his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth books and his invention of St Trinians, his work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions across the world and appears in several major American and European collections. He moved to Paris in 1961 and then, in 1975, to a remote village in Haute-Provence. He died in a hospital near his home.

1935 Singapore

1943 Japanese troops in Burma

1945 Sick Prisoner of Burma Railway

1947 The Enigma of the Japanese

1952 Tattooist

1953 Brick Lane

1953 Club Row, Spitalfields

1961 Eichmann in Court, Life Magazine

1965 Café Les Deux Magots, Paris

1965 Casablanca

1965 Club Régine, Paris

1965 Club St Germaine-des-Pres, Paris

1965 The Lido, Paris

1972 From "The suicide and reincarnation of an extremely small man"

A Bigger Slash - Hommage to D. Hockney 
lithograph

Christmas card

Love Story 
lithograph

Nigel Molesworth

Nobody Wants Me 
lithograph

St Trinians School

The Flight 
lithograph