Perhaps no American painter has been more associated with winter landscapes than the Impressionist John Henry Twachtman. When he died in 1902, his New York Times obituary declared, “No one has surpassed him in the painting of Winter landscapes, for while he knew how to render the delicate colors of tree and shrub against their white surroundings, his brush had the power to suggest the softness and fleecy quality of snow which has fallen recently and still clings to bough and stalk.” Here, Twachtman paints Horseneck Brook, a stream that cut through the artist’s seventeen-acre estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. The painting, which was probably painted en plein air (French for “in the open air”) is inscribed to Twachtman’s friend and neighbor Helen Irene Curtis, whose own home was just a mile’s walk from his. Curtis probably met Twachtman through her aunt, Mary French, who was married to Twachtman’s close friend, the artist John Ferguson Weir.
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- Titles Horseneck Brook (Proper)
- Artist John Henry Twachtman, American, 1853 - 1902
- Medium oil and wash on academy board
- Dimensions 11 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (29.8 x 46.4 cm) frame: 19 7/8 × 27 × 2 1/2 in. (50.5 × 68.6 × 6.4 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by Mrs. Bernard Steiner, 1983.32
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- On View
- Inscription signed LR: J. H. Twachtman
- Provenance Helen Irene Curtis Park (1884-1931), Greenwich, Connecticut; inherited by her husband, Halford Woodward Park (1884-1953), Greenwich, Connecticut; inherited by his son, Halford Woodward Park, Jr. (1918-1997), Old Greenwich, Connecticut [see note 1]; purchased by Spanierman Gallery, Inc., New York, 1982 [see note 2]; purchased by Birmingham Museum of Arts, Alabama, 1983
1. According to correspondence dated December 20, 1982 between Halford W. Park, Old Greenwich and Ira Spanierman, New York. This information is restated by Lisa N. Peters, John Henry Twachtman Catalogue Raisonné in a letter to Gail Andrews, Birmingham Museum of Art dated December 15, 2009. See object file.
2. According to Ira Spanierman, Inc, New York invoice dated April 6, 1983. See object file.
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