Gardening with a Paintbrush: Remembering John Henry Twachtman

August 8, 1902

My darling petal-seekers, it's the anniversary of the death of the landscape painter John Henry Twachtman who left our earthly garden on this day in 1902.

Twachtman was an impressionist painter known as one of "The Ten," a group of American Impressionists. It was said they were gardening with a paintbrush, my fellow flower-lovers.

By the middle of the 1880s, American impressionists were returning home from France, where they had learned to paint out-of-doors. At home in America, the gardening movement was well underway. So, when they were looking for things to paint, outside gardens became one of the foremost subjects.

Following in the footsteps of Monet, the painters would gather their things and go out in search of flowers. This period clearly drew the two great arts of painting and horticulture together, much like we ourselves are drawn to the intoxicating scent of a freshly bloomed peony, are we not?

During this period, the painters or their spouses or their families often started gardens of their own. In the case of Twachtman, he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, and he turned his suburban yard into a place of beauty.

Can you imagine, dear she-shed besties, the joy of transforming one's own little plot into a canvas of living color?

Twachtman is known for featuring flowers from his own garden as well as painting his family casually living their life and enjoying the outdoors. The man understood what truly matters in life - flowers, family, and the divine intersection of the two!

Twachtman's painting called, In the Greenhouse, was exhibited by the National Gallery in 1902.

And here's a delicious morsel about John Twachtman that was shared in the El Paso Herald in 1902, my garden companions:

A man who had once bought one of his landscape paintings, wanted Twachtman to weigh in on the hanging of the picture. Twachtman expressed his approval of the background, the height at which the canvas was hung, and the light.

"Indeed, there is only one change to make."

"What is that?" inquired his host, solicitously.

Twachtman replied, "You should hang it the other side up. I always have."

One must admire a man with such spirited wit, mustn't one?

My darling dirt-diggers, I find there's nothing quite like the combination of artistic genius and a touch of mischief to make one appreciate the fullness of life's garden.

The impressionists taught us to see the world differently - to notice how light dapples through leaves, how colors blend and blur at the edges, how a garden is not static but ever-changing with each passing hour.

Is this not what we gardeners know intimately?

The way our beloved plots transform before our very eyes, never the same from one moment to the next?

Twachtman's legacy blooms eternal in his canvases, capturing forever those fleeting moments in his Connecticut garden.

What a gift to posterity, my precious petal-tenders, to preserve the ephemeral beauty of a garden in brushstrokes that will never wilt or fade.