Pasture with Barns

John Henry Twachtman's Pasture with Barns is a quiet rural scene of a cluster of farm buildings on the far side of an overgrown fenced pasture, under a fair-weather sky. Beyond a few wildflowers in the foreground stands the diminutive figure of a well-dressed woman under a fashionably large hat. Otherwise, the landscape has a deserted, almost abandoned appearance, with a remnant of rustic fence, at lower left, apparently succumbing to the encroaching grasses. The fence, a nearby hedgerow, and another fence near the horizon enclose the pasture to enhance an aura of peaceful seclusion in a setting where agrarian life and nature harmoniously coexist. Rubbing and blurring the pastel color, Twachtman softened and generalized forms for a subjective, emotional effect. Following the example of American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler, an influential innovator in pastel, he used a tinted paper whose color he left exposed, especially in the upper right, to function as an additional element in this composition.

Encouraged by his companions William Merritt Chase and Robert Blum (1857–1903), Twachtman took up pastel drawing in 1885, during his student years in Europe, and he later exhibited with the Society of Painters in Pastel in New York. Originally dismissed as an amateurs' medium, pastel enjoyed a vogue in the late nineteenth century as artists developing a more subjective, purely aesthetic approach to art making came to appreciate its dense matte color and variety of effects. Twachtman worked enthusiastically in pastel from the late 1880s to the early 1890s, using it to picture the Connecticut landscape. This undated work may show the countryside near the Branchville home of his close friend and artistic associate Julian Alden Weir or a scene close to the Greenwich property Twachtman purchased in 1889, which became the principal source for his landscape subjects.

An American Revelation: The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 28–October 1, 1988.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999. [exh. cat.]

Sotheby's New York, New York (Sale 6713, May 25, 1995): lot 22. Ill. lot 22 (color).