Sunday, June 06, 1999

The many views of John Twachtman

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Exhibit of Cincinnati native's work is an eclectic collection from 'an original mind'

BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Grand Canal, 1878. Twachtman sees venice with a fresh perspective. He added a large black steamship to the gondola scene. | ZOOM |

Arques-la-Bataille, 1885. The artist spent time in this Normandy town painting views of the Bethune River. | ZOOM |

Icebound, 1890-95. Twatchtman wanted viewers of his work to find the hidden beauty in nature and sought a fresh approach to a site each time he painted it. | ZOOM |

In the Sunlight, 1893. Confident in his Impressionist approach, the artist painted his wife with her face indistinguishable, treating it like the forms in nature. | ZOOM |

Gloucester, Fisherman's House, 1901. Tensions surface in some of Twachtman's Gloucester works, suggested by the magenta and lavender tones used here. | ZOOM |

IF YOU GO

• What: John Twachtman: An American Impressionist   • When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, today through Sept. 5   • Where: Cincinnati Art Museum, Eden Park   • Admission: $8, $6 college students and seniors 55 and over, free to children under 18 and museum members.   • Information: 721-5204, www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org   • Special events:   • Summer concert series in museum sculpture garden, 2-5 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 29.   • Family Fun Day: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday. Impressions of America: Art making activities, performances and tours of the exhibition.   • Meet the Curator: 2 p.m. Saturday, gallery tour with John Wilson, CAM curator, painting and sculpture.   • Father's Day Special Event: CAM acting director Anita Ellis will lecture on John Twachtman at 2 p.m. Tours of the exhibition at noon and 3 p.m. Special brunch in the Museum Cafe.   • Lunch on the Terrace: Docent guided tours of the exhibition followed by lunch in the Museum Cafe, noon-2 p.m. Tuesdays.   • Adult Workshops: En Plein Air, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays, July 11, 18 and 25.   July 11: Katherine Hurley, pastels.   July 18: Susan Swinand, watercolors.   July 25: Carolyn Whitesel, drawing.   Program reservations: 721-2787.

        “What we want is an original mind,” John Henry Twachtman told his students at a Cos Cob, Conn., art colony near the end of his life.

        The search for a style, for a easily recognized look, was for him a trap. “There are artists who make a hit in one thing and forever after have to do something on the same order,” Twachtman said.

        Twachtman (1853-1902), who was born, reared and studied here and is considered to be Cincinnati's most famous artist, never did that.

        “He never went for commercial value. He stayed true to his life philosophy in his painting, his family and his teaching,” says Judy Larson, curator of John Twachtman: An American Impressionist.

        The exhibition, opening today at Cincinnati Art Museum, reveals the artist's many moods and methods.

        From the dark, heavy works of the Munich School to the vivid floral canvases of Impressionism and the muted, elegantly simple compositions that anticipate abstract painting, his art stands at the cusp of the century. It looks to the past in its search for the essence of reality and anticipates painting styles that would not emerge until a half century after his death.

        Twachtman's paintings, most of them, are lovely to look at and easy to like. He's an artist to enjoy, unless you try to put a label on him. Was he a realist, an impressionist, tonalist or modernist? He liked to experiment. In different times, at different places, his art had different moods.

        The exhibition follows his short career, from his early paintings of Venice to his final canvases of Gloucester.

Venice: The student
        “Sunny Venice, done under the influence of the Munich School,” is how Twachtman later described his Venice canvases of 1878.

        They were painted when the artist was in his mid-20s and still one of “Duveneck's Boys,” a group of young artists who studied with and followed the rules of painting taught by Frank Duveneck: Draw with the brush; block out the painting in masses of dark and light; use swift, vigorous brush strokes; and work in tones rather than colors, since no two people see color the same way.

        “A landscape hardly exists at all as a landscape,” the artist wrote to a friend in 1891, “because its appearance is constantly changing; it lives by virtue of its surroundings — the air and light — which vary continually.”

        It is the basis of his French landscapes of 1884-1885, tone poems painted with a limited palette and simple compositions, including “Arques-la-Battaille.” That painting, generally accepted as his masterpiece, was inspired by Japanese prints and is prophetic of mid-20th-century abstract painting.

White on white
        “We must have snow and lots of it,” Twachtman wrote to a friend from his home in Connecticut. “Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing. Everything is so quiet and the whole earth seems wrapped in a mantle. That feeling of quiet and all nature is hushed to silence.”

        Now often labeled “the Winter Impressionist,” Twachtman savored the challenge of painting white on white, in paintings so delicate that they approach invisibility.

        “You have to stand still and look for a long time at these paintings,” said CAM curator of painting John Wilson, “and let yourself become enveloped by them.”

        “I feel more and more contented with the isolation of country life,” Twachtman wrote. “I can see now how necessary it is to live always in the country — at all seasons of the year.”

        Twachtman's paintings of the 1890s focus on his home and family, with images of his wife and children and shimmering, colorful views of the Connecticut house and gardens.

        Impressionism is in full bloom in these paintings, lyrical pastel studies of flowers, sun filled views of the gardens, inspired by the paintings of Claude Monet.

        Confidence in his art and contentment in his life are evident in these, his most colorful and happy paintings.

An emotional end
        The harbor at Gloucester, Mass., is probably the most painted scene in America. Artists flocked there because it was America's closest equivalent to the Normandy villages seen in French art.

        In the last two summers of his life, Twachtman painted here with his old friend Duveneck. Twachtman's canvases are swiftly sketched, evidently unfinished, seldom resolved.

        “There was something gnawing at the soul of the man,” wrote Eliot Clark, who painted with him in Gloucester, “and for one approaching 50, something curiously uncertain and restless.”

        Twachtman died while painting at Gloucester, four days after his 49th birthday.

        The exhibition was organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta but premieres here, in recognition of Twachtman's many links to Cincinnati.

        The exhibition will travel to the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts in October and to Atlanta in February.

        The CAM adds a section in the middle focusing on the artist's etchings, including many done in Mount Auburn. That part of the show will not tour to the other American museums but may go to the Museum of American Art at Giverny, France.

Artist strived for fresh vision

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