Skip to main content
Collections Menu
(American, 1853–1902)

French Landscape

c. 1885
Etching with touches of drypoint and false biting on cream laid paper
Image: 8 1/4 x 7 7/8 in. (21.0 x 20.0 cm)
Sheet: 12 1/4 x 9 3/4 in. (31.1 x 24.8 cm)
Credit LineTerra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund
Object number2004.2
SignedUnsigned
Interpretation
Closely related to the painting Road Near Honfleur (TF 1989.15), John Henry Twachtman's etching French Landscape depicts the same curving road thought to be the coastal route between the towns of Trouville and Honfleur in the French Atlantic province of Normandy. For the print, Twachtman freely sketched the rural scene onto a small etching plate. With irregular, scratchy, and scribbled lines and dots, he depicted a roadway winding around a thatched cottage and continuing past several trees, including two poplars silhouetted against the sky. During the process of etching or biting the lines into the plate, accidental splotchy effects occurred where the acid slightly corroded some unprotected areas of the plate surface. Twachtman exploited the resulting tones for texture to articulate the otherwise nondescript foreground terrain, complementing the parallel lines that describe the cottage roof and foliage.

Compositionally, this print and the painting Road Near Honfleur are fairly similar, although the print is slightly more vertical in orientation and lacks a distant tree shown in the painting on the horizon at left. Where the painting features broadly painted swathes of color to indicate the forms of trees, cottage, land, and clouds, the print relies on dense lines and tones of black and white to translate the landscape to an intimate scale. The historical relationship between the two works is unclear. The print may have been created as an etched version of the already completed painting or from a sketch as another means of study for the painting. The free handling of trees and landscape offers a third possibility: that Twachtman etched the plate spontaneously, on-site before his subject, and made the painting later.
ProvenanceThe artist
Daughter of artist (Violet)
Descended in family
Mary Baskett Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio
Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, Illinois, 2004
Exhibition History
The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context (L’atelier de la Nature, 1860-1910. Invitation à la Terra Collection). Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny (organizers). Venue: Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny, France, September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021. [exh. cat. in French]

Published References
Wickenden, Robert J. The Art and Etchings of John Henry Twachtman. New York: Frederick Keppel and Company, 1921, pp. 20–30.

Baskett, Mary Welsh. John Henry Twachtman: American Impressionist Painter as a Printmaker; A Catalogue Raisonné of His Prints. New York: M. Hausberg, 1999. No. 17, pp. 95–96.Bourguignon, Katherine and Valerie Reis. The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context. (exh. cat, Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny). Paris, France: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2020.  Pl. 44, p. 114 (color).

Metadata Embedded, 2019
John H. Twachtman
c. 1883–85
Metadata embedded, 2017
John H. Twachtman
c. 1885
Pasture with Barns
John H. Twachtman
c. 1890–1900
Metadata Embedded, 2019
John H. Twachtman
c. 1890–1900
Metadata Embedded, 2019
John H. Twachtman
c. 1885–88
2019 Metadata Embedded
John H. Twachtman
1885–88
Metadata embedded, 2021
John H. Twachtman
c. 1888-89