JOHN TWACHTMAN, Brush House Cos Cob

San Francisco, The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, July 1928-February 2007 (on loan)

A number of critics argue that John Twachtman produced some of his best work at his home outside Greenwich, Connecticut, where he moved in 1889 and spent the remainder of his career. During his years in Greenwich, Twachtman joined fellow artists Childe Hassam and J. Alden Weir, amongst others, at the Holley House in the village of Cob Cob, which lay within the boundaries of Greenwich.  The lively gatherings at what Hassam affectionately dubbed the “Cos Cob Clapboard School” provided Twachtman with much-needed professional camaraderie and the outlying grounds became an important source of artistic inspiration.  The Brush House, a boardinghouse in Cos Cob, was a popular subject among the artists and one of the oldest structures in the village.

While many of his fellow artists preferred the verdant nature of summer or the multicolored leaves of autumn, Twachtman was one of the first American artists to devote his energies to painting the season of winter. In a letter to Julian Alden Weir in 1891, Twachtman wrote: “We must have snow and lots of it. Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing. Everything is so quiet and the whole earth seems wrapped in a mantle… All nature is hushed to silence…” (Dorothy Weir Young, The Life & Letters of J. Alden Weir, New Haven, Connecticut, 1960, p. 190).

In Twachtman’s snow scenes, like Brush House, Cos Cob, he wholeheartedly embraced the challenge of painting white snow. Deborah Chotner notes: “The snow Twachtman painted is never a true, bright white. Thick aggressively applied impasto is tempered by areas of the canvas’ exposed ground, or gently tinted with faint grays blues or mauves. The veils of color in his work are formed with delicate networks of brushstrokes, some short and dry and often in unexpected colors like salmon or green…. Using this method Twachtman chose to depict not glistening banks of fresh snow in sunlight, but soft mounds enveloped in the damp, gray atmosphere so common to winter weather along the Connecticut shore” (John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, New York, 1989, p. 82). As a result his snow scenes are quiet meditative pictures that capture the tranquility of winter.