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QUICK LINKS: Winter Harmony, Twachtman Barnyard, Twachtman | Low Tide, Riverside Yacht Club, Robinson Sailing in the Mist, Twachtman Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue, Hassam |
The Cos Cob art colony was a group of artists, many of them American Impressionists, who gathered during the summer months in and around Cos Cob, a section of Greenwich, Connecticut, from about 1890 to about 1920.
[1522-10]
![]() Image source: nga.gov | Of all the American artists who absorbed Impressionism, Twachtman was probably the most highly regarded both by the critics and by his fellow artists. His most idiosyncratic important complex of works concerned the winter landscapes, the best known of which is the Winter Harmony. Painted in whites, greys and blues only, with stray highlighting, paintings such as this most cogently conveyed the symbolic implications of Twachtman’s tendency toward abstraction. [Source: wga.hu] |
TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
Winter Harmony | 1890-1900 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
Twachtman, John Henry | 1853-1902, aged 49 | American painter | Cos Cob Colony |
LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1522-11] | |
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC | 65 x 81 |
Art historians consider Twachtman’s style of American Impressionism to be among the more personal and experimental of his generation. He was a member of ‘The Ten’, a loosely allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically unified group. [Source: Wikimedia commons] | ![]() Image source: wikimedia commons |
TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
Barnyard | c1890-1900 | Oil/Canvas | Genre painting |
ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
Twachtman, John Henry | 1853-1902, aged 49 | American painter | Cos Cob Colony |
LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1522-12] | |
64 x 77 |
![]() Image source: metmuseum.org | This work is one of a series of coastal scenes painted by Theodore Robinson at Cos Cob. It reveals how the painter synthesised the earlier influence of Claude Monet with a newfound interest in Japanese prints. As Robinson observed after acquiring his first print in 1894, My Japanese print points in a direction I must try and take: an aim for refinement and a kind of precision seen in the best old as well as modern work. [Source: metmuseum.org] |
TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
Low Tide, Riverside Yacht Club | 1894 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
Robinson, Theodore | 1852-1896, aged 43 | American painter | Cos Cob Colony |
LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1522-13] | |
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York USA | 46 x 61 |
One of the most poetic and abstract of John H. Twatchman’s Impressionist paintings, “Sailing in the Mist” epitomizes his ability to fuse color and light. This seascape, which is nearly square, lacks a traditional horizon line. It is only with subtle shifts in brushwork and white highlights that Twatchman hints at recessional space. Thinly applied layers of paint merge with the white ground to flatten the space further. This emphasis on two-dimensionality is characteristic of Twatchman’s best work and distinguishes it from that of other American Impressionists, who more often relied on line, brighter colors, and thickly impastoed surfaces to convey their imagery. [Source: metmuseum.org] | ![]() Image source: wikimedia commons |
TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
Sailing in the Mist | c1895 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
Twachtman, John Henry | 1853-1902, aged 49 | American painter | Cos Cob Colony |
LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1522-14] | |
30 x 30 |
![]() Image source: artmuseum.princeton.edu | Hassam’s images of New York were inspired by the urban life outside his studio on lower Fifth Avenue. That grand thoroughfare, the city’s cultural and commercial artery, was also the main parade route for the nation. Hassam had a window onto the country’s increasing involvement in World War I when he later moved his studio uptown to 57th Street, closer to the center of those colorful patriotic displays. He recalled, There was that Preparedness Day, and I looked up the avenue and saw these wonderful flags waving, and I painted the series of flag pictures after that. Here rain provides a pretext to dissolve the canvas into a harmony of red, white, and blue, while the innumerable American flags parallel the swarms of people below. [Source: artmuseum.princeton.edu] |
TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue, 1916 | 1916 | Oil/Canvas | Genre painting |
ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
Hassam, Frederick Childe | 1859-1935, aged 75 | American painter | Cos Cob Colony |
LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | ||
Princeton Univesity Art Museum | 46 x 39 |
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