During the summer of 1884 Twachtman—then a student at the Académie Julian in Paris—rented a château with his family at Arques-la-Bataille, Normandy, near the port of Dieppe, and focused on painting unpretentious views of the Arques River valley. In this work, he portrayed the edge of the Béthune, a tributary of the Arques, bordered by a fringe of reeds and meadow flowers. In his Paris studio the following winter, he reconsidered the naturalistic sketch and created his monumental canvas "Arques-la-Bataille" (68.52).

• Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

  Signature: [at lower left]: J. H. Twachtman

• Provenance

  the artist's daughter, Martha Twachtman; with Macbeth Gallery, New York, Jan. 1919; Albert R. Jones, Kansas City, Missouri (recorded 1957); Virginia Jones Mullen, Kansas City, Missouri and Padre Island, Corpus Christi, Texas, ca. 1960; with Norman Foster, Corpus Christi, Texas, early to mid-1960s; Aline T. Ivey, Taft, Texas; with Cathleen Gallander, Corpus Christi, Texas and New York, 1990 -91

• Timeline of Art History (2000–present)
  Thematic Essays

  Americans in Paris, 1860–1900

  Timelines

  The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.
• MetPublications
  "Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 1990–1991": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 49, no. 2 (Fall, 1991) (1991)