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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.

Winslow Homer

Girl Carrying a Basket, 1882

Not on View

Medium

watercolor over graphite on wove paper

Dimensions

sheet: 37.2 × 55.3 cm (14 5/8 × 21 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Ruth K. Henschel in memory of her husband, Charles R. Henschel

Catalogue Raisonné

Goodrich/Gerdts 2012, Vol. IV.1, no. 1109

Accession Number

1975.92.4

Artists / Makers

Winslow Homer (artist) American, 1836 - 1910

Image Use

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

Inscription

lower left in brown watercolor: HOMER 1882; lower left verso in black ink: No. 1 (circled); center verso in blue crayon: CA2050 (underlined)

Provenance

John Pierpont Morgan, New York, nd; Charles R. Henschel, New York, 1943, Ruth K. Henschel (Mrs. Charles R. Henschel), New York, 1956, gift to NGA, 1975

Associated Names

Henschel, Charles R., Mrs.
Morgan, Jr., John Pierpont

Exhibition History

1962: Water Colors by Winslow Homer from the Collection of Mrs. Charles R. Henschel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 6 July-12 Sept. 1962, no. 2

1966: Watercolors by Winslow Homer, 1836-1910, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 7 July-28 Aug. 1966, no. 16

1988: Winslow Homer: All the Cullercoats Pictures, The Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, England, 25 July-11 Nov. 1988, no. 31

1995: Winslow Homer, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (only), 1995-1996, not in cat.

1996: An Amazing Bit of Sleight of Hand: Winslow Homer's Watercolor Techniques, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, 1996, no cat.

2005: Winslow Homer in the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2005-2006, unnumbered brochure.

Bibliography

2012: Goodrich, Lloyd and Abigail Booth Gerdts. Record of Works by Winslow Homer. New York, 2012: IV.1, no. 1109, p. 112-113