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Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Poetry

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Artist(s): John Henry Twachtman (Cincinnati, OH, Aug 4, 1853 - Aug 8, 1902, Gloucester, MA)
Title: Hemlock Pool
Date: c. 1900
Dimensions: 29 7/8 in. x 24 7/8 in. (75.88 cm x 63.18 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Gift of anonymous donor, 1928.34

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Poetry
Exhibitions: Currents/Crosscurrents
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Music

Object Information

As an artist with a predilection for the intimate landscape, John Twachtman found inspiration in his personal environment. The seventeen acres on Round Hill Road in Greenwich, Connecticut, that he purchased in 1890-91 provided a setting for the development of his mature, individual style.<sup>1</sup> Here he painted some of his best-known images.

<i>Hemlock Pool</i> and <i><a href="http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj1477">Country House in Winter, Cos Cob</a></i> depict two of Twachtman's favorite subjects. Although he painted these motifs repeatedly during different seasons, both works demonstrate his preoccupation with winter scenes. Viewing the world under a blanket of snow suited Twachtman's creative vision, allowing him to exercise his sensitivity to tonal harmony and his interest in abstract design. While reflecting nature's moods, these paintings also represent Twachtman's unique adaptation of Impressionism, which was strongly influenced by James McNeill Whistler's aestheticism and by Japanese art.

Twachtman sought increasingly to express not only the beauty of nature, but also the emotional and spiritual solace that he found in the landscape. In a letter to his friend J. Alden Weir, dated 16 December 1891, he wrote:

<i>I feel more and more contented with the isolation of country life. To be isolated is a fine thing and we are then nearer to nature. I can see how necessary it is to live always in the country—at all seasons of the year. We must have snow and lots of it. Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing. Everything is so quiet and the whole earth seem</i> [sic] <i>wrapped in a mantle. That feeling of quiet and all nature is hushed to silence.</i><sup>2</sup>

<i>Hemlock Pool</i>, a canvas that the artist considered to be one of his best, captures these sentiments pictorially. Located behind his house at the bottom of a steep incline along the Horseneck Brook were the serene, tree-lined slopes and pond depicted in this work. The emphasis is on the simplified, vertical composition and textured surface. Its quiet, harmonious color scheme is achieved through a layering of warm orange hues over cool, silvery gray ones. Along with the central placement of the ice-ringed pool, the high horizon line flattens the picture, causing the viewer to focus on the water's reflection of the surrounding trees. Thus captured, the sheltering circle evokes a mood of contemplative reverie.

The fishing village of Cos Cob, Greenwich, was where Twachtman established an artists' colony and held summer classes for his pupils from New York's Art Students League. Yet, in spite of the companionship of his fellow artists Alden Weir and Theodore Robinson, Twachtman's preference for solitary communion with nature is apparent in <i>Country House in Winter, Cos Cob</i>. The building pictured, a popular and often-painted motif, is the Brush House and store, which was one of the oldest structures in the seaside town. It was located next to the Holley House, an inn owned by Edward Holley where Twachtman and other painters used to board. With this image, he celebrated the season through an arrangement of subtle variations of white. In addition to the abstract flatness and passages of brilliant impasto, the chalky matte surface reflects the artist's previous work in pastels and his unusual painting techniques; he dried his canvases outside in the sunlight, for example, to reduce the oil and to create such effects.<sup>3</sup>

Embodying the aesthetic theories and practices of both the Impressionist and Symbolist movements, Twachtman's paintings of winter scenes record the specific visual appearance of the season’s light and color while also revealing his inner response to the mystery and moods of nature. We find in these images the peaceful repose that Twachtman sought in the Greenwich landscape.

Sarah Vure, <i>Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, A Selective Catalogue</i> (Andover, Massachusetts, 1996), pp. 483-84


1. Twachtman purchased the property in two installments as recorded in the Warantee Deeds, Greenwich Town Hall, 7 March 1890, book 60, 236 (3-acre plot); 1 December 1891, book 61, 488 (13.4-acre plot). See Lisa N. Peters, "Twachtman's Greenwich Paintings: Context and Chronology," in Deborah Chotner, Lisa N. Peters, and Kathleen A. Pyne, <i>John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes</i> (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989), p. 43 n. 14.

2. Quoted in Kathleen A. Pyne, "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape," in Chotner, Peters, and Pyne, p. 53. Typescripts of Twachtman's letters are in the collection of Ira Spanierman, New York.

3. Recent conservation has revealed the painting's original pale tonalities and rapid brushwork; see Addison Gallery Archives.

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art), Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 2/17/1913 - 4/16/1913
Pictures for Peace: A Retrospective Exhibition Organized from the Armory Show of, The Cincinnati Art Museum, 3/18/1944 - 4/16/1944
Fogg Museum, 1909-1944; A Retrospective Exhibition, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 5/5/1945 - 6/17/1945
Masterpiece of the Month, Connecticut College, 1/1/1948 - 1/31/1948
Paintings by John H. Twachtman , The Milch Galleries, 11/14/1949 - 12/3/1949
Amerika Schildert [America Paints], Stedelijk Museum, 6/16/1950 - 9/10/1950
Campus Taste in Art [Student Taste in Art], Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/16/1951 - 3/12/1951
America and Impressionism, The Dayton Art Institute, 11/18/1951 - 12/16/1951
Abbott Thayer and John Twachtman, The Century Association, 3/5/1952 - 5/4/1952
Landmarks in American Art, 1670-1950, American Federation of Arts, 2/25/1953 - 3/28/1953
125 Years of American Art, The Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, 9/16/1953 - 10/11/1953
An Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture Commemorating the Armory Show of 1913 an, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 12/2/1955 - 12/30/1955
Scope in Collecting [25th Anniversary Exhibition], Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/19/1956 - 12/24/1956
The 1913 Armory Show in Retrospect, Mead Art Museum, 2/17/1958 - 3/17/1958
The Impressionist Mood in American Painting, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1/16/1959 - 2/16/1959
Living with Design, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/22/1959 - 10/23/1959
From the Archives of American Art: The Role of the Macbeth Gallery, American Federation of Arts, 10/8/1962 - 5/31/1963
1913 Armory Show 50th Anniversary Exhibition, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, 2/17/1963 - 4/28/1963
Four Centuries of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 11/27/1963 - 1/19/1964
John Henry Twachtman: A  Retrospective Exhibition, The Cincinnati Art Museum, 10/7/1966 - 11/20/1966
The Works, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/7/1969 - 2/22/1970
Five American Impressionists, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/16/1972 - 12/16/1972
American Landscaping of the Nineteenth Century, Jewett Arts Center/Wellesley College Museum, 12/1/1972 - 1/15/1973
Nothing is Certain But Change, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/18/1975 - 5/18/1975
Connecticut and American Impressionism: The Cos Cob Clapboard School, The Harbutt Gallery of Greenwich Library, 3/20/1980 - 5/31/1980
American Impressionism, Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/13/1981 - 3/8/1981
Masterworks of American Art from the Addison Gallery Collection, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Inc., 10/6/1981 - 10/31/1981
Andover Garden Club, Addison Gallery of American Art, 11/5/1982 - 11/7/1982
Landscapes from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/1/1983 - 5/1/1983
The Shock of Modernism in America: The Eight and Artists of the Armory Show, Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, 4/29/1984 - 7/29/1984
New Horizons: American Painting, 1840-1910, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 11/16/1987 - 7/10/1988
John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, National Gallery of Art, 10/15/1989 - 5/20/1990
American Masterworks, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/5/1990 - 12/16/1990
Point of View: Landscapes from the Addison Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/16/1992 - 12/20/1992
Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/21/1994 - 4/3/1994
Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/5/1995 - 12/17/1995
Addison Gallery of American Art: 65 Years, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/13/1996 - 7/31/1996
John Twachtman: An American Impressionist, High Museum of Art, 6/6/1999 - 5/21/2000
The Cos Cob Art Colony : Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore , National Academy of Design Museum, 2/13/2001 - 1/20/2002
Place and Perceptions, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/16/2002 - 7/31/2002
Working from Nature, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/19/2003 - 1/4/2004
Toward Abstraction, Addison Gallery of American Art, 12/23/2005 - 3/26/2006
75 Years of Giving, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/11/2006 - 7/31/2006
Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s, American Federation of Arts, 9/9/2006 - 9/7/2009
Eye on the Collection: Landscape Impressions, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/28/2007 - 7/31/2007
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/19/2013 - 3/10/2013
The Armory Show at 100, New-York Historical Society, 10/11/2013 - 2/23/2014
Dwight Tryon and American Tonalism, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/12/2014 - 1/4/2015
Searching for the Real, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/30/2015 - 7/31/2015
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2017 - 7/31/2018
Currents/Crosscurrents: American Art, 1850–1950, Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/16/2020 - 3/7/2021
Life and Art: The Greenwich Paintings of John Henry Twachtman, Greenwich Historical Society, 10/19/2022 - 1/22/2023

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