Arques-la-Bataille

John Henry Twachtman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Celebrated today as one of the most progressive and poetic landscape painters of his day, this work is one of several large canvases Twachtman produced during his two years of study in France. Developed from a plein-air (outdoors) oil sketch, which hangs nearby, it depicts a scene at Arques-la-Bataille, a town four miles southeast of Dieppe, in Normandy, where the Béthune and two other streams flow together to form the Arques River. Its formal design, tonalist palette, and overall aesthetic mood recall Japanese woodblock prints as well as the evocative paintings of James McNeill Whistler—both formative influences on Twachtman.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art