JAPANISM in the Cos Cob art colony

The canopy on Twachtman's bridge recalls the bridge-pavilions in Chinese landscape paintings. [10] Its arched span is also identified with Asian gardens. Twachtman and his contemporaries would have seen arched bridges in ukiyo-e prints (see P1. IV) and even on the popular Blue Willow ceramic pattern that was a product of eighteenth-century British chinoiserie. For Twachtman and his guests, as for their counterparts in Suzhou, Kyoto, and Giverny, the arch provided an elevated vantage point for admiring the brook and its banks.

Twachtman's fascination with Asia extended to its spiritual writings. According to a visitor, his bookshelves held "Max Muller's translations of the Far East Bibles," possibly the 51-volume set of The Sacred Books of the East (published between 1879 and 1910), which included Buddhist texts. [11] Asian religion abetted Twachtman's meditative approach to nature. Hemlock Pool (Pl. VII), one of many canvases he devoted to Horseneck Brook, conveys his rapt absorption in the mysteries of a familiar landscape. The high horizon line, sloping banks, and background screen of trees enclose the viewer in the quiet contemplation of an intimate landscape. Responding to such paintings, one critic linked Twachtman to "the painter-priests of Zen." [12]

The Cos Cob impressionists derived their understanding of Japan not only from books and prints but also from Japanese friends. Shugio Hiromichi (b.c. 1853) arrived in New York City in 1880 to direct the American branch of the First Japanese Manufacturing and Trading Company. [13] The Oxford-educated aristocrat moved easily in the city's artistic circles. He joined the Tile Club, of which Twachtman and Weir were also members, and dined at Weir's with Twachtman and Robinson. [14] The art colonists patronized Shugio's emporium as well as those of his rivals. The Holley House bookshelves held a travel guide to Japan stamped with the company's name and address. [15] In her address book Constant Holley (1871-1965), whose parents owned the boardinghouse, listed another import store, Yamanaka and Company. During their courtship, she and Twachtman's summer student Elmer Livingston MacRae frequented the tearoom at Vantine's.

One of New York's leading Japanese businessmen, the silk importer Rioichiro Arai lived just across the Mianus River from the Holley House. [16] In the early 1890s, Arai and his business associate Yasukata Murai built adjacent Queen Anne style houses near the Riverside Yacht Club, which they both joined in 1893. One of their neighbors and fellow club members was the crusading journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1 936), a central figure in the Cos Cob art colony The Arai ladies taught the Holley women ikebana, the Japanese style of flower arranging; Constant Holley in turn, instructed other Greenwich women in ikebana.

The Arai and Murai houses epitomize the cosmopolitan taste the artists shared. A slight pagoda-like lift to the gables and unusual terracotta roof ornaments lend a hint of the exotic to the large shingled houses. Inside the Arai house, Japanesque stained-glass windows testify to the original owners' ancestry. A large fan-shaped window in the front stairwell shows the sun at daybreak illuminating dangling wisteria vines (P1. IX). That allusion to Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun, is repeated in three smaller panels, depicting the imperial chrysanthemum flanked by blossoming branches of cherry and plum (P1. VIII). An unusual surface treatment of the clear glass in the three panels recalls Chinese Kraak porcelains. [17]