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Light pours over a woman and a dozen children of different ages standing in small groups near a boxy, red schoolhouse in this horizontal painting. The people all have pale or tanned skin and wear clothing in earthy tones of brown, black, white, and pale yellow. The woman stands at the lower center of the composition on a dirt-packed area in front of the building. She wears a white hat tied with a black ribbon under the back of her hair and a long black dress. Two girls in floppy hats, each wearing ankle-length dresses, and a young boy holding a pail stand around her. The other children wear pants and long-sleeved shirts, and some wear hats. A child stands in the open doorway along the right edge of the schoolhouse. The building has two windows on the same side as the door and a short chimney on the shallowly angled gray roof. On the short side of the building, a child paints the letters “WH” in white on the red boards of the building. A hill rises behind the schoolhouse and off the top right corner of the canvas. A sliver of white clouds against a pale blue sky cuts across the top left corner. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “WINSLOW HOMER.”

Winslow Homer

School Time, c. 1874

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 68

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 31.75 × 48.9 cm (12 1/2 × 19 1/4 in.)

framed: 39.85 × 56.83 × 4.76 cm (15 11/16 × 22 3/8 × 1 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

2014.18.19

Artists / Makers

Winslow Homer (painter) American, 1836 - 1910

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower left: WINSLOW HOMER; lower center left, being painted on the building by the child: W H

Provenance

John Pomeroy Townsend [1832-1898], New York. (Wildenstein & Co. Inc., New York); purchased January 1960 by Paul Mellon [1907-1999], Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA, with life interest to his wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon [1910-2014].

Associated Names

Mellon, Paul
Townsend, John Pomeroy
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

Exhibition History

1874: Forty-Ninth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 1874, no. 82.

1960: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture collected by Yale Alumni, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1960.

1968: American Art from Alumni Collections, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1968, no. 103, repro.

1986: Loan to display with permanent collection during the exhibition "Winslow Homer Watercolors," National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986.

Bibliography

1911: Downes, William Howe. The Life and Works of Winslow Homer. Boston and New York, 1911: 77, 277.

1944: Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer. New York, 1944: 49-50.

1995: Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai, and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Washington, D.C., and New Haven, 1995: 64, fig. 39.

2014: Kelly, Franklin. "A Lasting Legacy: The Completion of an Unparalleled Gift." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 51 (Fall 2014): 2-5, repro.