Boats moored on a Pond

John Henry Twachtman

Barcas amarradas en un estanque

Twachtman, John Henry

Cincinnati, 1853 - Gloucester, 1902

Boats moored on a Pond, c. 1890-1902

© Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza

Signed lower right: ''J. T. Twachtman''
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid

Oil on canvas

72,5 x 50 cm

CTB.1990.8

Artwork history

  • David M. and Patricia Twachtman. (David Twachtman was the artist’s grandson).

  • Bill Young.

  • Fontaine Collection.

  • Vose Galleries, Boston (MA).

  • Ed Shein.

  • R. H. Love Galleries, Chicago (IL), 1986.

  • Private collection, Wisconsin.

  • Spanierman Gallery, New York.

  • Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, 1990.

  • Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

1982 - 1983

American Impressionists (Exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Services), Paris, Petit Palais; Berlin, Staatliche Museen; Krakow, National Gallery; Bucharest, Art Museum; Sofia, National Gallery of Art, nº 73.

1996

De Canaletto a Kandinsky. Obras maestras de la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, nº 63, p. 172.

1996 - 1997

From Zurbaran to Picasso. Masterpieces from the Collection of Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Shanghai, Shanghai Museum; Beijing, China National Art Gallery, p. 134.

1997

Del vedutismo a las primeras vanguardias. Obras maestras de la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, nº 42, p. 148.

1997 - 1998

The Spirit of the Place. Masterworks from the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, New York, The Frick Collection; Hartford (CT), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, nº 19, p. 62.

1998 - 1999

Masterworks from the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; Takaoka, Takaoka Art Museum; Nagoya, Matsuzaka Art Museum; Sendai, Miyagi Museum of Art, nº 63, p. 144.

1999 - 2000

Del impresionismo a la vanguardia en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Barcelona, Centre Cultural Caixa Catalunya, p. 74.

2000

De Corot a Monet. Los orígenes de la pintura moderna en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Valencia, Museo del Siglo XIX, p. 226.

2001

Landschaften von Brueghel bis Kandinsky. Die Ausstellung zu Ehren des Sammlers Hans Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, nº 68, p. 174.

2014

L'ideal en el paisatge. De Meifrèn a Matisse i Gontxarova. Col·lecció Carmen Thyssen, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Fundació Privada Centre d'Art Col·lecció Catalana de Sant Feliu de Guíxols, p. 68, illus. p. 69.

2017 - 2018

Scenarios. From Monet to Estes. From Trouville to Nueva York. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra, 16 March 2017-14 January 2018. p. 30-31.

  • -Love, R. H.: Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet’s Shadow. Chicago (IL), 1985, illus. 53. [ – Work listed as: ”c. 1895”].

  • -Storm Nagy, E.: Europa e America. Dipinti e acquerelli dell’ Ottocento e del Novecento dalla Collezione Thyssen-Bornemisza. Guida delle opere esposte. Milan, 1993, nº 45, p. 66, illus.

  • -De Canaletto a Kandinsky. Obras maestras de la colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. [Exhib. Cat. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza]. Llorens Serra, Tomàs (ed.). Madrid, Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1996 , nº 63, p. 172. [Sheet by Kenneth W. Maddox].

  • -Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza. Arnaldo, Javier (ed.). 2 vols. Madrid, Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2004, vol. 2, p. 228, illus. p. 229 [ Sheet by Kenneth W. Maddox].

  • -Scenarios. From Monet to Estes. From Trouville to Nueva York. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra,  2017  p. 30-31. (Exhib. Cat) [Sheet by Kenneth W. Maddox].

  • -Colección Carmen Thyssen. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Ed. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2024. P. 156-157  [Sheet by  Kenneth W. Maddox]

Expert report

In Boats Moored on a Pond Twachtman has evoked the idea of what appears to be a European pleasure-spot, although unlike the landscapes of the French Impressionist, no human figures languish within his bucolic scene. The painting is assumed to have been painted after 1890 and in many ways closely relates to his paintings of Gloucester painted in 1901-1902, the last two years of his life. It was at this time, John Douglass Hale notes, that he moved away from the delicacy found in his Greenwich paintings, returning to the impulsive brushwork from his Munich period. More importantly, Twachtman began to again include black as part of his palette. The landscape may have come out of a brief trip the artist took to Honfleur, France in 1901.

The composition reflects the influence of Japanese art, discovered by Twachtman and his friend J. Alden Weir around 18943 The deep recession of space created by the diagonal zigzag pattern of the boats on the right is flattened by the vertical shapes of the boats, paralleled by the black trunk of the tree, on the left. The tree does not become an integral part of the composition, but serves to emphasise the flatness of the pictorial surface. The foreground boats establish the warm and cool tonalities of the overall composition; their shapes create a pattern that is carried through to the bulbous forms of the distant trees and the echoing arrangement of the clouds. As his friend Eliot Clark wrote of Twachtman: “He saw in nature the means for an arrangement of form and colour; he sought not so much the beauty of a part as the relation of parts to an organized whole.”

Kenneth W. Maddox

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