At the time of his death John Henry Twachtman was considered by the leading American impressionist artists to have been the country’s greatest landscape painter. At the age of fourteen he got a job decorating window shades. He took evening classes in drawing at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati from 1868 to 1871, when he began his studies at McMicken School of Design in that city. He studied there in 1874 with Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), and when Duveneck returned to Munich in 1875, he took with him Twachtman, who enrolled in the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts, studying with Ludwig Löfftz (1845-1910) until 1877. He spent the winter of 1877-78 in Venice with Duveneck and WILLIAM M. CHASE.
In 1878 Twachtman briefly returned to Cincinnati, then worked in the New York area. He exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Society of American Artists in 1878 and was made a member the following year. During the winter of 1879-80 he taught drawing and painting in Cincinnati, and in the fall of 1880 he taught in Florence at Duveneck’s school. The following spring he was in Venice with Duveneck, then returned to Cincinnati to marry Martha Scudder; their wedding trip took them to England, Holland, and Belgium as well as to Munich and Venice. In 1882 Twachtman returned to Cincinnati, where he painted in the suburb of Avondale. From 1883 to 1885 he studied life drawing in Paris at the Académie Julian with Gustave Boulanger (1824 -1888) and Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911). He also painted landscapes in France and Holland in a new style.
During the late 1880s Twachtman achieved recognition exhibiting his pastels, water, colors, and etchings. In 1888 he won the Webb prize of the Society of American Artists. In 1889 he and his close associate J. ALDEN WEIR exhibited their work at the Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, New York. From 1888 to 1893 he executed illustrations for Scribner’s, and he began teaching at the Art Students League in 1889, when he purchased a farm in Greenwich, Connecticut. During the following decade he worked in the style most associated. with his name. Recognition that came to him included a solo show at Wunderlich Gallery in New York in 1891, a silver medal at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and the Temple Gold Medal of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts the following year. In 1897 Twachtman was a founder of the Ten American Painters exhibiting group. After 1900 he spent his summers in the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eliot Clark, John Twachtman (New York: Privately printed, 1924), with bibliography § Allen Tucker, John H. Twachtman, American Artists Series (New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1931), with biographical note by Edmund Archer, bibliography § Index 20th Cent. Artists 2 (March 1935): 87-91; 2 (September 1935): 1; 3 (August-September 1936): 11; reprint, pp. 353-57, 365, 366 § John Douglass Hale, The Life and Creative Development of John H. Twachtman, Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1957, with chronology, bibliography, catalogue of works by media § New York, Ira Spanierman Gallery, Twachtman in Gloucester: His Last Years, 1900-1902, exh. cat., 1987, published by Universe Books, New York, with essays by John Douglass Hale, Richard J. Boyle, and William H. Gerdts, catalogue by Lisa N. Peters.
