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John Henry Twachtman Biography

American Impressionist painter
born 1853 - died 1902

Student of: William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Frank Duveneck (1848-1919).
Teacher of: Leon Kroll (1884-1974), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939).
Assistant to: William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) was one of the leading American impressionist painters. His most characteristic work is marked by an extreme lightness of palette that approaches pure white.

John Henry Twachtman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Aug. 4, 1853. The painter studied drawing in the evenings, but the most important influence on his artistic formation was Frank Duveneck, who had studied in Munich and settled in Cincinnati in 1873. When Duveneck returned to Munich, Twachtman went with him. The painter studied with Ludwig Loefftz, and one of his fellow students was William Merritt Chase.

In 1875, Frank Duveneck, a friend and teacher, invited the John Henry Twachtman artist to accompany him to Munich. He readily adopted the characteristic dark palette and rapid, open brushwork of Munich colleagues. After refining John Henry Twachtman painting skills on a trip to Venice in 1877, he returned to the United States and developed a forceful, realist manner, capturing the energy of city life in New York and Cincinnati.

Like many great painters, he was never fully appreciated or well known in his lifetime. John Henry Twachtman painting, which went beyond the representation of things, had a searching, abstract quality that was poorly understood. Fellow painter Edward Simmons recalled walking up and down Fifth Avenue in New York with John Henry Twachtman, hoping to sell one of his landscapes for $25.

The painter hungered after fame and fortune and was embittered by his failure to achieve them, even in his hometown. In Cincinnati, John Henry Twachtman once complained, "A good many people, all of them supposed to be up in art matters, have seen my paintings, but I am convinced they care little for them. This is a very old foggied place and only one kind of John Henry Twachtman art is considered good. The old Dusseldorf School comes in for its full share of honor."

Twachtman departed for Paris in 1883 with his wife and son to study with the popular teachers associated with the Academic Julian. He continued to improve his drawing skills, and the John Henry Twachtman paintings from this period reflect an increasing interest in composition. The salon-size landscape painting "Arques-la-Bataille" (Metropolitan Museum of Art) represents the pinnacle of his French period. Its stark composition and tonal palette reveal the influence of James McNeill Whistler as well as the flattened spaces and decorative patterns of Japanese art.

By the mid-1890s, his career became fully identified with the Impressionist movement, and American critics often compared him to Monet. John Henry Twachtman brush painting, however, usually differed from the broken strokes of other American Impressionists. The painter varied his paint application from rich, tactile strokes to dry, chalky surfaces.

By 1897, Twachtman became a founding member of "The Ten American Painters" (or "The Ten"), a group of artists who seceded from the Society of American Artists and exhibited together for the next 20 years. Of "The Ten," Weir, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf and Twachtman were united by their rejection of descriptive art in favor of more subjective, innovative interpretations of nature. He created some of his most bold and experimental paintings for inclusion in this group's landmark exhibitions.

In these John Henry Twachtman paintings the painter returned to the broadly brushed style of his Munich period and reintroduced black into his palette to capture the grittier images of life in Gloucester's commercial fishing docks. As in "Wild Cherry Tree" (Albright-Knox Art Gallery) or "Harbor View Hotel" (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), his use of daring compositions with simplified, geometric abstractions suggests his innate understanding of 20th century modernism.

After his marriage in 1881 in Cincinnati to the artist Martha Scudder, The painter again visited Europe, this time stopping in England, Holland, Belgium, and Germany. In Holland, John Henry Twachtman stayed with J. Alden Weir and his brother John Ferguson Weir, painting in Dordrecht and surrounding communities. During this trip, he also met the Dutch Hague School painter Anton Mauve who gave him encouragement and advice. During this trip Twachtman also became familiar with the work of the French painter of peasants, Jules Bastien-LePage.

In 1883, Twachtman went to Paris, continuing his studies at the Académie Julian under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. Fellow students included American artists Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Frank W. Benson, Edmund C. Tarbell, and Robert Reid, all of whom became lifelong friends. During the summers in France, The painter painted near Honfleur and Dieppe, and in Italy where he visited Duveneck and Blum. John Henry Twachtman painting changed at this time; his palette remained low-key, but tones became more closely modulated and his brushwork fluid and not apparent.

Following his return to America in 1886, the artist went to Chicago where he worked on a cyclorama. During the late 1880's, John Henry Twachtman spent time in Branchville, Connecticut, near J. Alden Weir's home, and worked extensively in pastel. In 1889, he and Weir held a joint exhibition and sale of their John Henry Twachtman paintings at the Ortgies Gallery in New York, and four years later, the American Art Gallery featured their work in a comparative exhibition with that of Monet and Paul Besnard.

Although John Henry Twachtman continued his interest in soft tonal qualities, The painter turned to an Impressionist technique during his Greenwich Period. His introduction to the style came not only through seeing the painting of French painters, but also through friends such as Theodore Robinson. An interest in structured compositions and a strong sense of design also become apparent in Greenwich paintings.

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The summers of 1900 to 1902 were spent in Gloucester, Massachusetts where Twachtman joined his old friend Duveneck and other painters many of whom started their careers in Cincinnati. For John Henry Twachtman Gloucester paintings, he painted alla prima, returning to the bold painterly style of his Munich years, but retaining the bright colors of his Greenwich Period.

One-man shows of John Henry Twachtman paintings and pastels were held in New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati in 1901. In the summer of 1902, the painter died suddenly in Gloucester. Several of his colleagues wrote at the time of his modernity, the "great beauty of design" in John Henry Twachtman painting, and his ability to express the spirit of the places John Henry Twachtman painted. Thomas Dewing wrote: "By the death of the painter, the world has lost an artist of the first rank. He is too modern, probably, to be fully recognized or appreciated at present: but his place will be recognized in the future."

During the following decade, Twachtman traveled back and forth between Europe and Cincinnati and New York, exhibiting John Henry Twachtman paintings and teaching. In New York he forged friendships with contemporary American artists such as William Merritt Chase, J. Alden Weir, John Weir, Theodore Robinson, and Childe Hassam. Perhaps influenced by these new contacts, he moved to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian in 1883. As a result of his studies there John Henry Twachtman developed a lighter palette.

The painter at this point had begun to focus on landscape painting. John Henry Twachtman was equally interested in capturing the atmospheric conditions of a scene in the tradition of English artist John Constable, and in interpreting natural elements through expressive painterly techniques as seen in the painting of J. M. W. Turner. Twachtman expanded the visual design elements of color, line, and perspective to create a certain perceptible mood in John Henry Twachtman paintings.

The farm was the inspiration for much of later John Henry Twachtman paintings, providing subjects that ranged from the waterfall to his gardens, arbors, woodlands, and even a footbridge he had constructed. Visible in all of these compositions is the inspiration John Henry Twachtman found in the painting of Claude Monet.

his capricious colors and his lavish impasto lend spontaneous and vibrant beauty to the rushing cascade, which hovers on the verge of abstraction. The effervescence of light gleaming off the water as it tumbles over rocks and across fissures is as much about nature as it is about the act of painting. Despite his advanced age, the artist's exuberance is also visible in this fully realized work by a master in complete control of his process.

John Henry Twachtman died in 1902.