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Winslow Homer in the National Gallery of Art

Introduction

 

From the late 1850s until his death in 1910, Winslow Homer produced a body of work distinguished by its thoughtful expression and its independence from artistic conventions. A man of multiple talents, Homer excelled equally in the arts of illustration, oil painting, and watercolor. Many of his works—depictions of children at play and in school, of farm girls attending to their work, hunters and their prey—have become classic images of nineteenth-century American life. Others speak to more universal themes such as the primal relationship of man to nature.

Highlighting a wide and representative range of Homer's art, this Web feature traces his extraordinary career from the battlefields, farmland, and coastal villages of America, to the North Sea fishing village of Cullercoats, the rocky coast of Maine, the Adirondacks, and the Caribbean, offering viewers the opportunity to experience and appreciate the breadth of his remarkable artistic achievement.

More than fifty paintings, drawings, prints, and watercolors in the Gallery's Homer collection will be on view at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Mezzanine, from July 3, 2005 – February 26, 2006.

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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Winslow Homer was born in Boston, the second of three sons of Henrietta Benson, an amateur watercolorist, and Charles Savage Homer, a hardware importer. As a young man, he was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer for two years before becoming a freelance illustrator in 1857. Soon he was a major contributor to such popular magazines as Harper’s Weekly; in 1859 he moved to New York to be closer to the publishers that commissioned his illustrations and to pursue his ambitions as a painter.

Napoleon Sarony, Photograph: Winslow Homer taken in N.Y., 1880 (detail), 1880, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of the Homer Family

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Sent by Harper’s to the front as an artist-correspondent during the Civil War, Homer captured the essential modernity of the conflict in such images as The Army of the Potomac—A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty. While traditional battle pictures usually depicted, in the words of a contemporary, “long lines…led on by generals in cocked hats,” Homer instead shows a solitary figure who, using new rifle technology, is able to fire from a distance and remain unseen by his target.

The subject of this engraving is based on Homer's first oil painting. An emblematic image of the Civil War, the lone figure of a sharpshooter reveals the changing nature of modern warfare. With new, mass-produced weapons such as rifled muskets, killing became distant, impersonal, and efficiently deadly. Despite public admiration for sharpshooters' skill, ordinary soldiers looked upon them as cold-blooded, mechanical killers. Many years after the war, Homer wrote an old friend, "I looked through one of their rifles once....The...impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I could think of in connection with the army and I always had a horror of that branch of the service."

After Winslow Homer, The Army of the Potomac - A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty, published 1862, wood engraving on newsprint, Avalon Fund, 1986.31.75

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In a camp, two soldiers wearing blue uniforms are lost in thought as they listen to a military band playing music in the background in this vertical painting. Their uniforms consist of midnight-blue jackets, stone-blue pants, and flat-topped, brimmed hats. Brass buttons line the open fronts of their jackets, and a gold-colored emblem is affixed to the tops of their caps. One soldier, at the center of the painting, stands facing our left in profile with one hand on his hip. Another, to our right, sits in front of a tent, also looking to our left. The seated soldier’s knees are spread wide. One hand rests on at least two pieces of paper on his thigh, and he rests his chin in the other hand, also propped on his thigh. A low, triangular tent, about waist-high, is pitched to the left of the standing solider. The inside is dark but closer inspection reveals the bottom of one boot, presumably belonging to a solider lying down inside. At the lower left of the painting, gray smoke drifts up from a pot on a campfire. A knapsack and a pewter plate holding waffle-like hardtack are laid near the tent. A few branches cover the dirt ground to our right. A tan cloth draped over an arbor-like structure of sticks forms a partition between the two soldiers and the rest of the camp, dividing the composition. Rows of tents extend into the distance. A band of soldiers plays music in the distance, light glinting off their gold horn instruments. A row of tents is visible in the deep distance, perhaps across a body of water. The horizon line comes about two-thirds of the way up the composition, and puffy white clouds drift across the pale blue sky above.

Homer drew upon his experience of the war to create his first oil paintings, many of them scenes of camp life that illuminate the physical and psychological plight of ordinary soldiers. He received national acclaim for these early works, both for the strength of his technique and the candor of his subjects.

This picture, exhibited in New York in 1863, was enthusiastically admired and quickly sold. The title refers to the song frequently played by the Union regimental band, a piece that no doubt inspired homesickness and longing in the infantry men who listened to it.

But the title also refers to the soldiers' present "home," shown with all of its domestic details—a small pot on a smoky fire, hard biscuits on a tin plate—that Homer, who did the cooking and washing when he was on the front, knew intimately, and that, with surely intended irony, was far from "sweet."

Home, Sweet Home, c. 1863, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1997.72.1

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Facing away from us, a light-skinned woman blowing a silver horn stands in a grassy landscape in this vertical painting. The woman is lit brightly from the upper right, making her ankle-length, white dress glow. The sleeves are rolled back to her elbows, and a black ribbon fastens her blond hair in a net. We see the right edge of her cheekbone, and her skin is smooth and pale. She holds the horn up with her right hand and plants the back of her other hand on her hip. She stands with her heels together, wearing black boots. A strong wind from our right lifts and twists the hem of her dress and the thin ties at her waist. She stands on a patch of dirt within a leaf-strewn, grassy lawn. The edge of a building with wooden siding, presumably a house, runs parallel to the left edge of the painting. A vine grows up the corner of the house, and the very edge of a window frame is seen along the left side. At the corner of the house, two plants grow in pots, and an overturned, metal jug leans against the wall. An expanse of bright green grass stretches in front of the young woman. The land dips and rises a short distance away. A reddish-brown cow lies in the field beyond as black and white chickens peck the grass. The dark green canopies of trees growing to our left fill the top third of the painting. In the deep distance, a few dots of paint indicate people wearing white and red, working on a strip of brown land. One man works a plow pulled by a brown horse. A mounded, golden haystack sits farther back in that field. A strip of blue along the horizon could be water or distant hills. The turquoise sky above peeks through the canopies of the trees. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “WINSLOW HOMER. 1870.”

In the late 1860s, Homer turned to life in rural and coastal America for his subject matter. His postwar work employs a brighter palette and freer brushwork, and shows his interest in the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. The freshness of his touch is evident in the brilliant light and delicate coloration of The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside). The young woman sounding the call to dinner appears in several other paintings and relates to one of Homer’s favorite motifs throughout the 1870s: the solitary female figure, often absorbed in thought or work.

The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside), 1870, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.2

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Many of Homer's paintings show self-assured, independent, working women, such as the teacher featured prominently in The Red School House. The one-room schoolhouse in the background appears in a number of Homer's works from this time, including Snap the Whip, one of his most beloved images.

The Red School House, 1873, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.21

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Childhood, an important theme in the work of such contemporary American writers as Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain, became Homer’s principal subject in the early 1870s. Pictures of children gathered in a one-room schoolhouse, playing in the countryside, or sitting on the beach on a summer day suited the postwar nostalgia for the presumed simplicity and innocence of a bygone era.

Lagarde, American (?), active c. 1873, Snap-the-Whip, published 1873, wood engraving on newsprint, Avalon Fund, 1986.31.268

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A woman holding a baby stands near a young boy who perches in the tipped-up end of a rowboat that has been pulled onto a sandy beach in this horizontal painting. All the people have light skin. The turquoise and aquamarine-blue ocean beyond meets the pale blue sky at the horizon line, about halfway up the composition. To our left of center, one end of the wooden rowboat has been propped on what might be a fallen piling on the sandy, rocky beach. The boy sitting in the bow faces our left almost in profile, and wears a round, brimmed straw hat over brown hair, a brown, long-sleeved shirt, and charcoal-gray pants. His face turns away from us so we only see his cheek and the curve of his ear. To our right, the woman’s dark hair is pulled up and she wears a white apron over a long brown skirt. She stands angled to our right and looks over the shoulder of the blond baby she holds up against her chest. The child is dressed in a white skirt, blue sash, a red jacket, and black shoes. The beach around the people is strewn with another rowboat, large boulders, a wooden barrel, and fishing nets hung over a tall frame to dry. A few tufts of scrubby grass grow in the sand around the woman’s feet. The white sails of several ships line the horizon in the deep distance. Thin, pale peach clouds float across an ice-blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower left corner: “WINSLOW HOMER 1873.”

Homer’s early works, while mainly set outdoors, are almost all figure paintings. This was a conspicuous departure from the type of pure landscape that dominated nineteenth-century American art. Homer spent the summer of 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he painted this family of a fisherman awaiting his return. The exuberance suggested by the title—first given when an engraving of the painting was published in Harper's Weekly in 1873—is tempered by the meditative air of the still, silhouetted figures. The mother faces away from the sea, while the young boy scans a horizon that yields no sign of an approaching boat. Instead of depicting a celebratory narrative of homecoming, Homer captures the more ambiguous moment of watching and waiting. He would have been acutely aware of this aspect of the lives of fishermen's families, for Gloucester experienced a significant loss of life due to tragedies at sea during his stay.

Dad's Coming!, 1873, oil on wood, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 2001.97.1

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Close to us, a young man and three boys sit or recline in a small sailboat that tips to our left on a choppy dark green sea in this horizontal painting. The billowing sail extends off the top left corner of the canvas and is echoed in the background to our right by the tall sails of another ship in the distance. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and puffy gray and white clouds sweep across the turquoise sky. The sun lights the scene from our right so the boys’ ruddy faces are in shadow under their hats. The young man and boys all face our left so they lean against and into the boat as it cants up to our right. The boy nearest the sail to our left reclines across the bow. Next to him to our right, a younger boy perches on the edge of the boat and holds on with both hands. The oldest, in a red shirt, sits on the floor of the boat as he maneuvers the sail with a rope. Closer to us and to our right, a younger boy sits with his bare feet pressed together in front of his bent knees on the back edge of the boat, gazing into the distance over his right shoulder as he handles the tiller. The artist signed and dated the painting in dark letters in the lower right corner: “HOMER 1876.”

One of Homer's most popular paintings, Breezing Up was first exhibited in 1876, the year of America's centenary celebration. Critics hailed the work for its freshness and energy. Amid the general climate of optimism and great expectations for the future, some sensed an even larger meaning in the scene—one writer declared that "the skipper's young American son, gazing brightly off to the illimitable horizon [is a symbol of] our country's quiet valor, hearty cheer, and sublime ignorance of bad luck."

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873-1876, oil on canvas, Gift of the W. L. and May T. Mellon Foundation, 1943.13.1

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Homer often assembled his prints from diverse sources. In Ship-Building, Gloucester Harbor, he brought together from four different works, including two oil paintings, a drawing, and a watercolor of four boys, who appear in reverse. Children often gathered in the shipyard after school, to collect chips for kindling, build chip houses, observe the workmen, and to carve and rig miniature vessels. The text that acccompanied the print in Harper's Weekly described the picture as "interesting not only as a work of art, but as a suggestion of the renewed enterprise and activity which are beginning to manifest themselves in American ship-yards. All along our immense line of coast may be seen indications which awaken the hope that America will soon resume her former supremacy in building ships."

(top) 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

(bottom) After Winslow Homer, Ship-Building, Gloucester Harbor, published 1873, wood engraving on newsprint, Avalon Fund, 1986.31.119

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Homer had been working as an artist for nearly two decades when, in the words of one contemporary critic, he took "a sudden and desperate plunge into watercolor painting." Long the domain of amateur painters, watercolors had gained professional respectability in 1866 with the formation of the American Water Color Society. Homer recognized their potential for profit—for he could produce and sell them quickly—but he also liked the way watercolor allowed him to experiment more easily than oil.

He created his first series in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1873, and by the time he painted his last watercolor, in 1905, he had become the unrivaled master of the medium in America.

Some critics found fault in Homer's early watercolors for their apparent lack of finish and their commonplace subject matter. Yet Homer valued them from the start. He priced The Sick Chicken, a delicate work that demonstrates his early technique of filling in outlined forms with washes of color, at the steep price of one hundred dollars.

The Sick Chicken, 1874, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.21

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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 size of this watercolor and its highly finished state suggest that Homer was attempting to create what English artists called "exhibition watercolors"—works that were intended to rival the aesthetic power and impact of oil paintings.

Homer often reused the same figures in different scenes. The girl in this work appeared previously in a drawing, an oil painting, and two watercolors. More generally, she is related to the many solitary figures of women that appear in Homer's work especially during the 1870s, including The Sick Chicken and Fresh Eggs.

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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A young woman with pale skin stands with her back to us as she points to a blackboard with a long stick in this vertical watercolor painting. Her body is angled away to our right, and she turns her head so her face is in profile, also to our right. The blue eye we can see looks down under a furrowed brow, and her small lips are closed over a rounded chin. She holds the pointer in her right hand as her left arm tucks across her lower back so that hand hooks into the right elbow. Her honey-blond hair is tied with a light tan ribbon like a headband, and a braid is coiled at the back of her head. She wears a checkered white and pale-green pinafore over a long, sage-green dress. The toe of one black shoe peeks out from under the hem. The blackboard behind her is drawn with three rows of geometric shapes outlined in white chalk. Her pointer aims at a circle near the top right corner. The floor and upper half of the wall behind and above the board are pink-tinged tan, and nickel gray fills the lower half of the wall beneath the board. The artist signed and dated the lower right of the blackboard, “Homer '77.”

For a short period in the late 1870s, a decorative quality became evident in Homer's art. Blackboard, which continues the theme of elementary education found in many of his oils, epitomizes this development. The studied elegance of the work's design derives in part from its monochromatic palette and in part from the geometric patterning found in the bands of color in the background, the checkered apron, and the marks on the board.

The marks on the blackboard puzzled scholars for many years. They now have been identified as belonging to a method of drawing instruction popular in American schools in the 1870s. In their earliest lessons, young children were taught to draw by forming simple combinations of lines, as seen on the blackboard here. Rather than being a polite accomplishment, drawing was viewed as having a practical application, playing a valuable role in industrial design. Homer playfully signed the blackboard in its lower-right corner as though with chalk.

Blackboard, 1877, watercolor on wove paper, Gift of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990.60.1

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Homer spent several months during the summer and late fall of 1878 at Houghton Farm, the country residence of a patron in Mountainville, New York. There he created dozens of watercolors of farm girls and boys playing and pursuing various tasks, including Warm Afternoon. Painted quickly and often outdoors, these watercolors present idyllic scenes of rural life that follow in the European tradition of pastoral painting.

(left) Warm Afternoon (Shepherdess), 1878, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on gray-green paper faded to brown, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.24

(right) Girl with Hay Rake, 1878, watercolor, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.17

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A boy leads a girl by her hand across three wooden steps that allow for passage over a fence in this horizontal watercolor. The fence spans the width of the paper, but angles slightly away from us as it moves off to our left. The fence is made up of four widely spaced horizontal rails across vertical posts. The boy and girl face away from us but have pale or tanned skin and brown hair. The girl is on our side of the fence, her front foot on the top step. She wears a long white dress edged with ruffles and shaded with slate blue. Her hair is tied with a blue ribbon, and another ribbon flies from the back of her straw-colored hat. The boy begins to step down on the far side of the fence. He wears tan overalls, a gray shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. The ankle we can see is bare. A tree branch with dark green leaves dips down into the scene from the upper right corner. A wash of dark green on the far side of the fence suggests a shrub in an otherwise flat field of fresh, celery green. The top rail of the fence overlaps the horizon, where a light blue hill rises to fill much of the upper half of the composition. A narrow wedge of cream-white sky angles into our view at the top left. The artist signed the lower right corner, “HOMER.”

These graceful depictions of boys and girls frolicking in the outdoors are fluidly painted and transparently colored, conveying a sense of lightness and spontaneity.

On the Stile, c. 1878, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.23

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On the Fence, 1878, watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.22

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In March 1881, Homer sailed from New York to England, where he spent twenty months in the small fishing villlage of Cullercoats on the North Sea.

 

Homer painted primarily in watercolor while in Cullercoats. Numerous preliminary studies and the careful planning evident in these works reflect his aspiration to construct a more classical, stable art of seriousness and gravity.

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

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The fisherwomen of Cullercoats were a source of constant inspiration to Homer during his stay in England. Admiring their strength and endurance, he endowed them with a sense of calm dignity and grace. Sparrow Hall, one of a few finished oil paintings produced in Cullercoats, depicts women knitting or darning near the entrance to a seventeenth-century cottage, the oldest house in the village. The children, as well as the array of baskets, barrels, crates, and floats scattered about the scene, serve as reminders of the women's innumerable responsibilities: keeping house, tending children, repairing nets, gathering bait, and cleaning fish. On the steps, a girl protectively steadies a younger child who dangles a bit of blue yarn in front of a calico cat. Sparrow Hall, wonderfully conceived, brightly colored, and superbly painted, stands very high among the Cullercoats works, and indeed among Homer's images from any period.

Sparrow Hall, c. 1881-1882, oil on canvas, John Wilmerding Collection

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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.

Homer's Cullercoats women have often been called heroic, and, although he may have idealized them somewhat, the stern facts of their lives clearly instilled in them great strength and courage. Popular literature of the period depicted the fisherwomen of the North Sea region as uninhibited beauties who exemplified morality and intellectual honesty, a fitting subject for a high and profound art based on contemporary life. Homer remarked, "There were none like them in my country."

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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Homer returned to New York in 1882 and faced the challenge of finding a theme as compelling as that which had occupied him in Cullercoats. Homer had almost always set up an emphatic juxtaposition between the role of women on the shore and that of the men on the sea. As the women determinedly went about their own business, confronted with the inexorable prospect of separation and loss, the men faced tangible physical peril in their constant battle with the elements. In the paintings (and subsequent graphic depictions) of the 1880s, Homer occasionally merged the two themes. The etching Saved, a powerful, highly classicized representation of herioic struggle is based on Homer's 1884 oil painting The Life Line. The wet drapery clinging to the woman's solid form, the anonymity of the rescuer, whose face has been obscured by the scarf as wind and waves swirl about them, all help to convey the sense of physical and emotional exhaustion and the protagonist's heroic effort to triumph over nature's fury.

This remarkably fertile period in Homer's career brought him great critical acclaim. The Life Line was an immediate success, but Homer's work held little commercial appeal. Its striking composition and strong dramatic mood did not match the prevailing aesthetic taste. After viewing Homer's work in a National Academy exhibition, one critic remarked that his paintings had a "rude vigor and grim force that is almost a tonic in the midst of the namby-pambyism of many of the other pictures on display."

Saved, 1889, etching, Gift of John W. Beatty, Jr., 1964.4.10

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Eight Bells, one of Homer's best-known paintings and the last of the series of great sea pictures that had commenced with The Life Line three years earlier, was completed in 1886 but not shown until 1888. The title refers to the sounding of eight bells done at the hours of four, eight, and twelve a.m. and p.m. Two sailors dominate the foreground, but the details of the ship and its riggings have been minimized. In the etching above, one of his finest, Homer has de-emphasized the background rigging and sky even further to underscore the figures' monumentality.

Homer's depiction seems to transcend "mere realism" and reveal an element of heroism in the mundane activities of his protagonists. A contemporary critic noted that the artist "has caught the color and motion of the greenish waves, white-capped and rolling, the strength of the dark clouds broken with a rift of sunlight, and the sturdy, manly character of the sailors at the rail. In short, he has seen and told in a strong painter's manner what there was of beauty and interest in the scene."

Eight Bells, 1887, etching, Gift of John W. Beatty, Jr., 1964.4.7

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Hauling in the Nets, 1887, watercolor over graphite, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.6

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Homer was drawn to the starkly beautiful scenery of the peninsula of Prout's Neck, Maine, settling permenantly there in 1883. Working in watercolor, he began recording the wild power of the sea in various conditions of light and weather, as in this picture of waves breaking against the rugged shore in a dramatic spray of foam. It is one of Homer's first pure marine pictures, without the addition of figures or narrative. This depiction of the elemental forces of nature is an early indication of the artist's primary pictorial concern in his later years.  A friend later recalled Homer's attraction to inclement weather: "[W]hen I knew him he was comparatively indifferent to the ordinary and peaceful aspects of the ocean....But when the lowering clouds gathered above the horizon, and tumultuous waves ran along the rockbound coast and up the shelving, precipitous rocks, his interest became intense."

Incoming Tide, Scarboro, Maine, 1883, watercolor, Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel, 1975.92.8

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To escape the harsh Maine winters, Homer began traveling in 1884 to the tropics (Florida, Cuba, the Bahamas, and Bermuda) where, in response to the extraordinary light and color, he created dazzling watercolors distinguished by their spontaneity, freshness, and informal compositions.

Homer traveled to Nassau in the winter of 1884–1885 at the request of Century Magazine, which commissioned illustrations for an article on the popular tourist destination. There Homer executed more than thirty watercolors whose subjects are representative of the scenery of the island and lives of its citizens; however, his greater interest was in capturing the light and atmosphere of the region.

Native Huts, Nassau, 1885, watercolor, graphite, and gouache on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.20

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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.”

In scenes of sun-drenched harbors and shores, Homer often left parts of the white paper exposed to give a sense of the brilliant atmosphere. He painted at least nineteen watercolors in Bermuda, a place he visited twice beginning in 1899. He believed them to be "as good work...as I ever did." They reveal—especially in their fluid washes—the consummate mastery of the medium that Homer had achieved by this point in his career. Homer generally preferred the blue skies and white clouds typical of the island's climate. Only occasionally, as in the remarkable The Coming Storm, did he portray ominous weather.

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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An avid fisherman, Homer often visited the Adirondack region of upstate New York, where he made many of his finest and most moving paintings. Using watercolor as his principal medium, he recorded the various pursuits of fishermen and hunters.

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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These works celebrate the pleasures and beauty of life in the Adirondacks but also confront the more brutal realities of hunting. In one series, Homer depicted a practice called hounding, in which dogs were used to drive deer into a lake.

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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Once in  the lake, the deer would be clubbed, shot, or drowned easily by hunters in boats. In Sketch for "Hound and Hunter," a young boy struggles to secure a dead deer while also attending to his dog. It was an unusual subject that many found disturbing; critics mistakenly believed that the hunter here was struggling to drown a live deer when in fact, as Homer explained, the deer was already dead.

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 young man with a peachy, ruddy complexion lies on his stomach in a wooden rowboat on a river, reaching forward to grasp the horn of a stag almost completely submerged in the rippling water with one hand. On the opposite riverbank, gold, rust, and scarlet-red trees span the width of this horizontal painting. The boy’s arms straddle the stern of the boat so one holds the antler with his right hand, closer to us, while the other clutches a rope with a loop at the end. He turns his face, mouth agape and cheeks flushed, over his right shoulder to look to our left, at a dog swimming toward the boat. The dog has white and caramel-brown markings, with dark brown ears. The boy wears earth-brown clothing and the front of his wide-brimmed hat is pushed up to reveal dark eyes and sable-brown bangs and brows. The stag and dog are between us and the boat, and are surrounded by thick brushstrokes of parchment white to create ripples in the forest-green water. Only the open muzzle, part of the eye, and the tips of the stag’s antlers are above the water’s surface. To our right, a bare, fallen tree lies along the far riverbank parallel to the boat. The boat and water fill the lower half of the scene and the autumn trees fill the upper half. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower right, “Winslow Homer 1892.”

Homer considered the oil version of Hound and Hunter a "great work" and described the pains he took in painting it: "Did you notice the boy's hands–all sunburnt; the wrists somewhat sunburnt, but not as brown as his hands; and the bit of forearm where his sleeve is pulled back but not sunburnt at all? I spent more than a week painting those hands."

Hound and Hunter, 1892, oil on canvas, Gift of Stephen C. Clark, 1947.11.1

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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.”

The watercolors Homer produced in Key West in 1903 focus on the graceful white sailing vessels that filled the harbor and plied the local waters. Key West, Hauling Anchor, with its white boat, red-shirted crew, and blue sea reveals Homer's ability to create powerful images using simple pictorial elements. The remarkable confidence and freedom of his handling, with details convincingly suggested but not literally described, make the Key West watercolors some of his most vibrant.

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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During the last decade of his life, Homer made four visits to Florida. An avid angler, he spent much of his time on these trips fishing rather than painting. He declared the fishing in Homosassa, located off the Gulf of Mexico, "the best in America." Many of the Homosassa watercolors, such as this one, depict the black swath of jungle just beyond the waters where Homer and others fished. The Florida pictures of 1903 to 1905 would be Homer's final series of watercolors. After that, he painted only in oil.

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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We look onto two black-headed ducks twisting and flailing midair against a slate-gray landscape in this horizontal painting. The silvery white body of the bird to our left faces us as its neck twists to our left, its black wings extended. The bird to our right falls with its head facing down, its gray wings partially contracted and its legs splayed. The landscape behind them is made up of a sliver of golden amber along the top edge above three wider bands of steel gray that darken toward the bottom of the canvas. A spray of turquoise near the bottom center of the painting indicates that the gray bands are cresting waves. Seen in the distance beyond the feet of the left bird, a gray smudge suggests smoke obscuring a man wearing a gray garment and vivid orange cap. His elbows are raised, presumably holding a shotgun. He sits in a long brown canoe that rides near the crest of the middle wave.

Homer painted less frequently in the last decade of his life. The paintings he did produce, deepened by intimations of mortality, include some of the most complex pictures of his career.

Right and Left, one of Homer's last paintings, is at once a sporting picture and a tragic reflection on life and death. The title refers to the act of shooting the ducks successivelly with separate barrels of a shotgun. The red flash and billowing gray smoke barely visible at the middle left indicate that a hunter has just fired at the pair of goldeneye ducks. The picture captures the moment but leaves important questions unresolved. Has the rifle hit its mark? If so, does the downward plunge of the bird on the right indicate that it has been hit, or is it diving to escape? The duck on the left seems frozen, but that stasis does not necessarily reveal its physical condition. And consider the precarious position in which Homer has placed the viewer, observing the scene while apparently hovering in mid-air, at one with the threatened creatures—and directly in the path of the oncoming shotgun blast. With its ambiguous message, unconventional point of view, and diverse sources of inspiration ranging from Japanese art to popular hunting imagery, this painting summarizes the creative complexity of Homer's late style.

Although Winslow Homer avoided any discussion of the meaning of his art, the progression of his creative life attests to the presence of a rigorous, principled mind. Continuously refining his artistic efforts, Homer created work that was not only powerful in aesthetic terms but also movingly profound. Acclaimed at his death for his extraordinary achievements, Homer remains today among the most respected and admired figures in the history of American art.

Right and Left, 1909, oil on canvas, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1951.8.1

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The Winslow Homer Web feature was designed and produced by Donna Mann and edited by Amanda Sparrow. The text has been compiled from various Gallery sources, including exhibition brochures, catalogue essays, and wall texts written by Charles M. Brock and Franklin Kelly in the Department of American and British Paintings and Margaret Doyle in the Department of Exhibition Programs. The video program excerpted here was produced by the Division of Education. Thanks to Charles Brock, Franklin Kelly, Margaret Doyle, Barbara Moore, Amy Lewis, Rachel Richards, Leo Kasun, the Department of Imaging and Visual Services, and the Publishing Office for their assistance with this project.

Signature in Palette, undated, pen and brown ink on paper, John Davis Hatch Collection

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