From France to Greenwich

While working in the orbit of Claude Monet in Giverny, France, where he completed this painting, the American artist Theodore Robinson struggled to translate his impressions of nature to canvas without resorting to stylistic formulas. The vague treatment of the woman’s face and vegetation with a flurry of brushwork imparts a sense of immediacy and blurred motion that may derive from Robinson’s reliance on photographs as compositional aids. His subtle handling of space and the woman’s face are easier to appreciate since the recent removal of a varnish layer that was applied to the painting after it left the artist’s hands.

Robinson’s sensitivity to visual effects echoes that of fellow Impressionist John Henry Twachtman. Robinson spent time with Twachtman in Greenwich during periodic visits to America in the late 1880s and early 1890s.     Quote from Florence Griswold Museum,

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