Revered by the artists of his era as a "painter's painter," Cincinnati-born John Henry Twachtman was at the forefront of American avant-garde art movements of his time. Much of his early career was spent abroad. He studied in Munich from 1875 to 1878.

In 1880, after a period of painting in New York, he went to Florence, Italy, to teach at the school his friend Frank Duveneck had established there. He lived in France from 1883 through 1885, study-ing in Paris at the Academie Julian and painting in Normandy and Holland in the summers.

After settling in Greenwich, Connecticut, in about 1889, he developed a distinctive Impressionist style, which was transmitted to him in part by his friend Theodore Robinson, who had spent many summers close to Claude Monet, and in part by his exposure to French art in New York galleries. Yet Twachtman's Impressionist style may also be seen as evolving naturally from the artistic explorations of his earlier career, and his mature aesthetic was tempered by his personal response to nature and his versatile and individual technique.

In Greenwich, Twachtman focused on painting the familiar motifs found on his own property, modifying his handling to the particular qualities that a subject evoked.

From 1900 through 1902 Twachtman spent summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he worked alla prima, returning to the bold, painterly style of his Munich years but retaining the vivacity of his Greenwich art.

In 1897 Twachtman was a founding member of the Ten American Painters.

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton