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The painting's complex color harmonies and crusty interwoven strokes infused with soft light exhibit the elements that make Twachtman a key American Impressionist.

This peaceful scene was painted on the artist's farm in Connecticut.

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John Henry Twachtman

A Summer Day, 1900

oil on canvas

27 x 30 in.

John Herron Fund

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John Twachtman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1853 and began his career at age 14, helping his father decorate window shades. He studied in Munich with William Merritt Chase and Frank Duveneck, and his early paintings were in the dark, shadowy Munich manner. In 1833 he went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian and came under the influence of French Impressionism. His paintings shifted from the Munich technique to soft gray and green tones. He became one of the founding members of The Ten, a group that included America’s most important Impressionist painters. Twachtman lightened his palette to the point where white dominated his canvases. He favored pure landscapes, shunning the inclusion of figures and buildings. When they did appear in his scenes, they were almost lost in the hazy atmosphere. Twachtman’s landscapes often had an abstract quality that anticipated the Modernist style that would eventually dominate American art.

The complex color harmonies and crusty, interwoven strokes of pigment in A Summer Day recall the French painter Claude Monet’s canvases. Twachtman employed the color innovations of the Impressionists in capturing the illusion of an atmospheric veil and the blue shimmer of sun on stone and water. Rhythmic lines in the contour of hill and rock, the bent figure in the boat, and the curve of the water’s edge form a decorative patterning that is repetitious without being monotonous. This peaceful scene was painted on the artist’s farm in Connecticut.

Reference

Lisa N. Peters. John Henry Twachtman: An American Impressionist. Manchester, Vermont: Hudson Hills Press, 1999. ISBN-13: 978-1555951788