Misty Landscape

John Henry Twachtman, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, began his artistic career following in the footsteps of his father, as a window shade decorator. In 1875 Twachtman went to Europe, formally studying painting in Munich and traveling to Venice. In a subsequent trip to Europe in 1883, he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, an art school with a more relaxed atmosphere than that of the École des Beaux-Arts. It was there that Twachtman began working in the impressionist style for which he was known. Upon his return to the United States, he settled on a farm near Greenwich, Connecticut, and commuted to New York City to teach at the Art Students League and the Cooper Union. In 1897, Twachtman helped found the leading group of American impressionists, know as “The Ten American Painters.” Twachtman’s Greenwich farm became the subject of many of his best-known landscapes. The work that he produced in the 1890s, his so-called Greenwich Period, was characterized by a light palette and a modified impressionist technique, as is seen in Misty Landscape. In this painting, Twachtman goes beyond impressionism with a nearly complete dissolution of form. The thin, freely sweeping brushwork, is atmospheric and mood-evoking rather than descriptive. We can distinguish only the most subtle hints of trees and hills in this work.