Hemlock Pool

Media - 1929.6.140 - SAAM-1929.6.140_1 - 83180
Copied John Henry Twachtman, Hemlock Pool, ca. 1890-1900, oil on canvas, 22 1430 14 in. (56.576.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.140
Free to use

Artwork Details

Title
Hemlock Pool
Date
ca. 1890-1900
Dimensions
22 1430 14 in. (56.576.7 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of John Gellatly
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Landscape — water
  • Landscape — Connecticut — Greenwich
Object Number
1929.6.140

Artwork Description

John Twachtman painted this scene in all different seasons. He drew inspiration from his seventeen acres of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his paintings of the property express the emotional and spiritual comfort he found there. This image, likely made in autumn, shows a pond located behind his house at the bottom of a steep incline along the Horseneck Brook. Twachtman created many images of streams and brooks, and these ceaselessly moving bodies of water might have held a deeper significance for him. By the time Twachtman painted his Connecticut landscapes, American artists and intellectuals had been interested in Buddhism for more than two decades, and the artist himself had studied Zen philosophy and Japanese art. (Pyne, "John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape," in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989) This may account for the meditative quality of his pictures, the sense of looking not at an actual landscape, but at an inward image of something seen long before.

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