View of the Brush House, Cos Cob, Connecticut

John Henry Twachtman's View of the Brush House at Cos Cob, Connecticut, painted around 1901 and held at the Dayton Art Institute, depicts the building that served as the central social and painting venue for the American Impressionist colony at Cos Cob. The Brush House, run by the Holley family, provided lodging and studio space for a remarkable succession of American painters — Chase, Hassam, Weir, and Twachtman himself among them — making it one of the most important sites in the history of American Impressionism. Twachtman's intimate, quiet rendering of this building he knew intimately captures the spirit of the colonial life that sustained American painting.

Twachtman's characteristically muted palette renders the Brush House in the soft light of a New England day — greys and greens predominating, the architecture settled comfortably into its landscape setting. His subdued Impressionism, more restrained than the French original, conveys the quiet domesticity of the painter's colony.