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Winslow Homer Watercolors: A Survey of Themes and Styles

In 1881 Winslow Homer began a series of watercolors based on life in the seaside fishing village of Cullercoats, England, where he stayed for almost two years. Unlike Homer’s earlier watercolors, the Cullercoats works have a timeless quality that was earlier characteristic only of his oil paintings.

Although large steam trawlers had begun to replace smaller boats as fishing craft in Cullercoats, Homer preferred to focus on the old ways. In Mending the Nets, he conveys the idea of skills acquired through generations of families at work. Mending, along with dividing the catch and distributing the fish at market, occupied the fisherwomens’ time for most of the day.

The composition suggests Homer’s familiarity with classical sculpture. The overlapping figures of the women create a compact group in a relatively shallow space, recalling relief sculpture such as the Parthenon friezes that Homer may have seen at the British Museum. The neutral background silhouettes the two figures starkly, emphasizing their strong sculptural quality. In this way, Homer presents these women at their daily tasks as timeless archetypes, imbued with a sober and noble simplicity.

Mending the Nets, 1882, watercolor and gouache over graphite, Bequest of Julia B. Engel, 1984.58.3

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There is a thematic trend in Homer’s deer hunting series; his subjects shift over time from the start of the hunt to the kill. In A Good Shot, Adirondacks, we are in the presence of death. Removed spatially and emotionally from the hunter, we focus on the prey. Homer’s only watercolor to show a deer being killed, this work captures the moment the stag is shot, just as he climbs to the top of a rock in a river of rushing water. On the right are the silhouettes of two hounds running in the direction of the deer. To the left, a puff of white smoke from the hunter’s just-fired rifle wafts through the air.

A Good Shot, Adirondacks, 1892, watercolor, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.5

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In 1889 Homer began a series of watercolors on deer hunting in the wilderness of the Adirondacks. One method, called hounding, involved using dogs to track and chase the deer. The guide or hunter would enter the forest with a leash of hounds attached to his belt, and release one dog at a time, allowing it to run in ever-widening circles in search of a deer trail. When pursued the deer instinctively takes to water, where the dogs cannot follow the scent. The hunter waited in a boat and would overtake the deer once it had entered the water, then shoot or club the animal.

Hounding was a controversial practice. Still-hunting, where the hunter tracked the deer through the woods without the benefit of dogs, was considered more sportsmanlike. However, Homer's hunters are not wealthy sportsmen, casually shooting for entertainment, but local guides hunting for food and livelihood. On the Trail shows a young woodsman at the start of the hunt, holding two lively dogs, their tails twitching in anticipation.

On the Trail, c. 1892, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.12

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Another watercolor in Homer’s series on hounding, Sketch for “Hound and Hunter” shows a young hunter lying in a guideboat, tightly holding a noose in one hand and a dead deer in the other. His attention is centered on the dog swimming toward him. After having killed the deer, the boy’s first task is to secure it and then either haul it into the boat or tow it ashore. At the same time, the dog must be lifted into the boat. However, it is not certain that Homer's subject will be able to accomplish either task on his own.

The self-assurance of man in relation to nature that characterizes many of Homer’s watercolors from this period is notably absent from this work. Instead, the youth of the hunter coupled with the instability of his position in the boat communicate uncertainty and, in a larger sense, represent the precarious outlook of those who have little knowledge and respect for nature.

Sketch for "Hound and Hunter", 1892, watercolor on wove paper, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.7

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A white boat with sails lowered floats in an aquamarine-blue ocean under a pale, sapphire-blue sky in this horizontal watercolor painting. To our right of center, the boat floats with its right, starboard side facing us and the bow angled slightly away. The white sails bunch up under the lowered, horizontal booms just above the top of the boat. The masts and rigging extend off the top of the composition. A group of a few people are gathered in the bow, on the far side of the sails. They are painted loosely but appear to have brown skin and red or black clothing. Waves lap against the side of the boat. To our left, an island or sliver of land with three palm trees deep in the distance lines the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. The water and sky are painted with layers of pale washes. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower left corner with dark paint: “HOMER KEY WEST 1903.”

After not working for more than a year, Homer traveled to Florida in December 1903. The watercolors he executed on this trip turned out to be his final series. Key West, Hauling Anchor is part of the Key West series, which focused exclusively on the schooners in the harbor. The white hulled boats floating on blue water continue a motif used earlier in the Bahamas.

As with the Bahamas series, Homer ignored all but the essentials and concentrated on capturing the effects of light and color. The simplified color scheme of white hull and sails, red-shirted crew, and gray-blue sea and sky produce a scene of sunlit clarity. A sense of continuous movement is created by cropping the top of the masts and furled sail. The Key West watercolors are among the artist’s most luminous and vibrant works.

Key West, Hauling Anchor, 1903, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.9

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Four Boys on a Beach, c. 1873, graphite with watercolor and gouache on wove paper, John Davis Hatch Collection, Andrew W. Mellon Fund, 1979.19.1

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A pale-skinned young woman stands facing our right on a grassy hillside also occupied by two cows, a rooster, and a chicken in this vertical watercolor. The palette is dominated with olive, forest, and sage green with touches of mauve pink, brown, and black. The woman’s body is angled slightly toward us, but her head turns away so we see her in profile. She wears a long, pale mauve-pink dress with a charcoal-gray and rust-brown scarf draped over her shoulders. White stockings and brown shoes peek out from under the ankle-length hem. A boxy, pale pink form, perhaps a bonnet, hangs down her back from a slender ribbon around the front of her neck. Her arms rest at her sides as she holds a small wooden stool in one hand and the handle of a wooden pail in the other. Just in front of her feet, a caramel-brown chicken pecks at the ground as the rooster, with a flounce of black tail feathers, looks alertly into the distance. The cluster of trees in the near distance beyond the young woman nearly fill the rest of the scene with their leafy canopies. Two cows are under the trees, one to either side of the woman. A chocolate-brown cow with a white face lies down on the left, while a ginger-brown cow stands on the right. Sunlight peeks in through a few gaps in the leaves. A portion of a distant slate-blue mountain and patch of pale peach sky are visible over the cow’s head in the lower left. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “HOMER 1878.”

The Milk Maid, 1878, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.11

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On the Sands, 1881, watercolor and gouache with pen and black ink over graphite, Bequest of Julia B. Engel, 1984.58.1

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A young woman with light skin carries a large basket propped on her hip down a steep dune in this horizontal watercolor, which is painted mostly in light slate blue, sage green, tan, and ivory white. She is near the top of the hill, to our left. Her reddish-brown hair is pulled back to the nape of her neck. She wears a long, steel-blue dress with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and black clog-like shoes. The hill she stands on angles steeply down from almost the top left corner of the paper to just inside the lower right corner, and it is dotted with scrubby green grasses on sand-colored ground. The horizon line is very low, nearly along the bottom edge of the composition. In the deep distance, beyond the dune in the lower right corner, a small patch of blue water with a single sailboat is visible. The bright, hazy sky is nearly white.

Girl Carrying a Basket, 1882, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.4

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Santiago de Cuba, 1885, watercolor and pen and black ink over graphite, Bequest of Julia B. Engel, 1984.58.4

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Two Scouts, 1887, watercolor over graphite on wove paper, Gift of Nancy Voorhees, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1992.6.1

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Casting, Number Two, 1894, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.2

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We look across a coral-pink beach that curves around a royal-blue bay, under a glimmering, pale blue sky in this horizontal watercolor landscape. The area of the beach closest to us is cast under a pale, plum-purple shadow. The beach curves away from us and to the right, like a backward C. At the curve, a short distance from us, a bank of emerald-green vegetation and a scrubby, dark green tree leads back to a low, grassy hill. A pair of two-story buildings with oyster-white walls and bright white roofs perch on the spit of land opposite us, across the water. Pale pink boats are pulled up onto the beach in front of and to our left of the buildings. The buildings and the green hill reflect in the water, which laps against the sand closest to us with bands of azure blue. More loosely painted buildings line the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Two brick-red smudges to our left could be people standing at the water’s edge in the distance. The sky above has puffy white clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The artist signed the painting in the lower left, “HOMER.” In the lower right, the location and date are written in dark gray, “Salt Kettle Dec 1899.”

Salt Kettle, Bermuda, 1899, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.15

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Charcoal-gray clouds fill most of the sky over a turquoise-blue body of water in this horizontal watercolor painting. The gray clouds on the left become more blue as they move to the right. The water is framed by low hills sloping down from both sides, which are painted in cinnamon and dark brown with touches of forest green and topped with a few slender, windblown trees. Several black rocks form a curve along the lower right side of a cove directly in front of us. Loose strokes of brown, tan, and pale blue fill the lower right corner below them. On the horizon, at the center of the composition, is a dark gray finger of land with a tiny steamship drifting by, smoke rising from its two smokestacks. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “Homer 1901.”

The Coming Storm, 1901, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.3

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Red Shirt, Homosassa, Florida, 1904, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.13

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