John Henry Twachtman - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Brief Article

John Henry Twachtman was one of the most original of the American impressionists. A traveling exhibition devoted to the work of this singular artist is on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia until January 2, 2000, after which it travels to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (which organized it), where it is on view from February 26 to May 21, 2000. It is entitled John Twachtman: An American Impressionist and comprises some fifty paintings that demonstrate a stylistic range much broader than the title of this show would indicate.

Twachtman's oeuvre can be divided into four periods: his early years in Munich, Venice, and New York City, his study in France and travels in Europe, his mature years in Connecticut, and his late work in Gloucester, Massachusetts. These locations serve only as benchmarks, however, for Twachtman traveled incessantly, both here and abroad, for most of his life.

The artist was born in Cincinnati in 1853 and became a student of Frank Duveneck, who took him to Munich in 1875. There Twachtman adopted the dark palette and forceful, heavy brushstrokes that characterized the contemporary artistic style of that city. In the spring of 1877 Twachtman departed for Venice with Duveneck and William Merritt Chase and there, eschewing the traditional views of the canals and historic monuments, he painted the more intimate aspects of the city in loose sketchlike strokes. By the spring of 1879 he was painting in New York City, renting rooms in the University Building on Washington square. His preferred subjects were dockyards and harbor scenes. A sociable man, he joined the Society of American Artists and the Tile Club in 1879 and formed lifelong friendships with the leading artists of the day.

For financial reasons, Twachtman was forced to return to Cincinnati in the fall of 1879, where he met Martha (Mattie) Scudder, also an artist, whom he married in 1881. He concentrated on etching during this short visit to Ohio, and was back in New York City in the early summer of 1880. By the end of June he was in Nonquitt, Massachusetts, with Chase and R. Swain Gifford. Not long thereafter, he took a teaching job in Italy at the invitation of Duveneck, who had established a school in Florence. In 1881 he traveled to Holland where he encountered the Hague school of painters, who were becoming well known in the United States. His lighter tones and spare compositions demonstrate the influence of this group. Twachtman and his wife settled briefly with her father in Avondale, Ohio, but life outside the artistic mainstream proved too isolating, and Twachtman returned to Europe, this time to Paris, Normandy, and Holland. He became interested and highly successful in capturing atmospheric conditions in works that rely on subtle transitions from one passage to another.. For the first time he experimented with pastels, using them in quiet tones that render these among the most lyrical and beautiful of his paintings.

Eventually back in the United States in the winter of 1885 and 1886, Twachtman began to use more animated, looser brushstrokes, becoming more like the impressionists in all but color. He created outstanding snow scenes that are evocative, almost monochromatic, studies in tones of white and gray He made the transition to recording the effects of light through color when he traveled to Connecticut in 1888. The following year he purchased a farmhouse near Greenwich, and the landscape there became his subject matter for most of the remaining years of his careen

His final works are devoted to subjects he chose in Gloucester - harbor views and the fishing industry at the wharves - which he depicted in a heightened palette. These works are more spontaneous, indeed, more abstract, yet always demonstrate that nature was his point of departure. These canvases presage a more modern way of looking at everyday subjects, yet endowing them with a poetic vibrancy characteristic of this imaginative artist.

The catalogue of the exhibition, written by Lisa N. Peters is published by the High Museum of Art and distributed by Hudson Hills Press. It may be obtained from the Pennsylvania Academy's museum shop by telephoning 215-972-2075.

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