Biography of John Henry Twachtman

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 Twachtman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Aug. 4, 1853. His parents were immigrants, and his father worked as a decorator of window shades, an occupation in which John joined him at the age of 14. John 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. He studied with Ludwig Loefftz, and one of his fellow students was William Merritt Chase.

In 1877 Duveneck, Chase, and Twachtman went to Venice, a trip which was a most important artistic event in their lives. Twachtman sent two of his Italian pictures to the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists in 1878 and returned to the United States that same year. But in 1880 he was back in Europe, teaching at Duveneck's famous school in Florence. That summer Twachtman went to Venice and probably met James McNeill Whistler, who may have influenced his etchings, as he did his whole generation. In 1881 he married, and during his wedding trip he painted and etched with J. Alden Weir.

Twachtman's early paintings are in the dark Munich manner, but he was by no means committed to the dark palette, which was passing out of favor. In 1833 he settled in Paris to learn the new French impressionist style; it was a matter of artistic survival. He passed smoothly into impressionism. Back in New York, he exhibited with Weir and taught at the Art Students League with Chase. Twachtman was a decided success and in 1898 was a founding member of the group of painters known as "The Ten." He bought a place in Greenwich, Conn., not far from Weir's, and painted a great deal at Cos Cob, at Greenwich, and at Weir's farm. His palette became lighter and lighter, and in his favorite scenes of snow and ice he achieved a degree of whiteness that went well beyond Claude Monet's winter landscapes.

Twachtman was a particularly pure example of a landscape painter; his figures are few, and there are not many buildings in his pictures. His Connecticut scenes have a unique grace and delicacy; they never follow a formula and are never empty. His poetic pastorals, with their soft and pale gray-green trees and fields, his almost ornately frozen brooks and waterfalls, by no means mirror the man. He was a difficult and melancholy personality, and at the height of his career, alone, depressed, and estranged from his family, he died at Gloucester, Mass., on Aug. 8, 1902.

Further Reading

• The best treatment of Twachtman is Cincinnati Art Museum, Twachtman (1966), with an introduction by Richard Boyle. Also see a collection of essays about Twachtman's life in Lisa Peters, John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist (1999). The standard monographs are Eliot C. Clark, John Twachtman (1924), and Allen Tucker, John H. Twachtman (1931).
• Twachtman, John Henry, John Twachtman, New York: Watson Guptill, 1979.