GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born in Boston in 1836 and raised in Cambridge, Homer's artistic career began at age 19 with an apprenticeship in the lithography shop of J. H. Bufford. Attracting attention for his drawing skills, he left Bufford's at age 21, launching a career as free-lance illustrator for Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. In 1859 he moved to New York where he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design and took a few painting lessons with Frederic Rondel. Homer covered Abraham Lincoln's inauguration for Harper's and was sent to the Virginia front during the Civil War, from which experience he derived a number of illustrations and a series of paintings remarkable for their realism. In 1867, Homer traveled to Paris where he was influenced by the work of Monet, Renoir, Manet and Japanese and Chinese prints. Upon his return to the United States, he spent some time working in the country (mostly New England) painting both fashionable women in summer resorts and simpler scenes of rural farm life often featuring children.
He treated the same themes in illustrations, creating a carefully observed yet idyllic record of rural life in the 1860s and 70s. In 1865 he helped to found the American Watercolor Society. During the 1870s Homer gradually introduced themes of hunting in the Adirondacks and life among Blacks in rural Virginia. He spent 1881-82 near Tynemouth, England, a rugged fishing port on the North Sea, and here his subjects underwent a definitive shift, from tranquil genre scenes to watercolor sketches of the sea and the sturdy people making a living from it, for the first time intimating an awareness of the natural and human drama of survival. In 1883 he returned again to the States, settling in Prout's Neck on the Maine Coast. His work continued in its Tynemouth vein, depicting wild rather than inhabited nature in such subjects as the sea, forest, mountains, and lives of outdoor men. He made a number of excursions to Canada and the Adirondacks on hunting and fishing trips and traveled to such exotic locations as the Grand Banks, Nassau, the Carribean Islands, Cuba and Florida, recording his experiences in brilliant watercolor sketches. Homer was awarded several medals for his paintings in the 1890s and continued to paint through 1909. He died at Prout's Neck in 1910, already recognized as one of America's greatest and most original painters.
Adapted from
- Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern, September 26- November 14, 1982, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts), 71.
- Gail Davitt, DMA unpublished material, 1986-87.
NOTES
In contrast to the prevailing romanticism in which he grew up, Homer's viewpoint was naturalistic. He looked neither to the art of his predecessors nor that of his contemporaries for hints of how things should be done.
Winslow Homer had very little special training. He had illustrated for Harpers and had done a series of portraits for the Massachusetts Senate before going to "New York where he took night classes at the National Academy . For almost 17 years he contributed drawings to Harpers, genre compositions and pictorial records of army life during the Civil War. In his late forties he settled in Maine - taking winter excursions to the Bahama Islands, Cuba, and Florida - to achieve the peak in his artistic accomplishment both in his seascape canvases and his watercolor sketches.
Human interest in his canvases have always held the attention of the average observer, and the more discerning eye will recognize the unconventional quality of observation in them, their unforced and unaffected truth.
From Famous American Paintings assembled for the State Fair of Texas, 1948, exhibition cat from Piction
Casting in the Falls, 1889, watercolor, 14 X 20"
This work was probably executed on one of Homer's camping trips in the Adirondacks. In this particular work a single figure is silhouetted against the horizon, with the foreground and background flattened. The fluidity of watercolor is used to dramatize the violent movement and crashing water.
Biography taken from Dallas Collects American paintings, pp 71
Born in BostOn in 1836 and raised in Cambridge, Homer's artistic career began at age 19 with an apprenticeship in the lithography shop ofJ. H. Bufford. Attracting attention for his drawing skills, he len Bufford's at age 21, launching a career as free-lance illustratOr for Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. In 1859 he moved to New York where he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design and took a few painting lessons with Frederic Rondel. Homer covered Lincoln's inauguration for Harper's and was sent to the Virginia front during the Civil War, from which experience derived a number of illustrations and a series of paintings remarkable for their realism. Homer made his first trip abroad to France in 186<).67, and upon his return worked from late spring to early fall in the country (mostly New England) painting both fashionable women in summer resorts and simpler scenes of rural farm life often featuring children.
He treated the same themes in illustrations, creating a carefully observed yet idyllic record of rural life in the 1860s and 70s. During the 70s Homer gradually introduced themes of hunting in the Adirondacks and life among Blacks in rural Virginia. He spent 1881-82 near Tynemouth, England, a rugged fishing port on the North Sea, and here his subjects underwent a definitive shift, from tranquil genre scenes to watercolor sketches of the sea and the sturdy people making a living from it, for the first time intimating an awareness ofthe natural and human drama of survival. In 1883 he returned again to the States, settling in Prout's Neck on the Maine Coast. His work continued in its Tynemouth vein, depicting wild rather than inhabited nature in such subjects as the sea, forest, mountains, and lives of outdoor men. He made a number of excursions to Canada and the Adirondacks on hunting and fishing trips and traveled to such exotic locations as the Grand Banks, Nassau, the Carribean Islands, Cuba and Florida, recording his experiences in brilliant watercolor sketches. Homer was awarded several medals for his paintings in the 1890s and continued to paint through 1909. He died at Prout's Neck in 1910, already recognized as one of America's greatest and most original painters.
Passage about Herring Fishing, 1894
Although this watercolor is inscribed 1894, it relates very closely to a series of works Homer executed in 1884-85. One can therefore presume either that the inscription was added at a later date and is incorrect, or that Homer returned to his theme ten years after its inception to rework certain ideas.
While living in Tynemouth, England, Homer had grown to admire the hardy villagers who lived off the sea, and after he moved to Prout's Neck in 1883 he continued to explore this symbiotic man-and-the·sea subject with numerous works dealing with fishermen along the Maine coast. The fishing fleet at Prout's Neck was an old institution and the area's primary industry, with origins stretching back to the 17th century. When a huge herring run occured off its shores in 1884, Homer seized the opportunity to row out and sketch the large fleet in action. Several known studies of two fishermen in a dory wearing rain gear and pulling aboard nets of herring lead up to the major painting called The Herring Net (1885) in the Art Institute of Chicago (see Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work Of Winslow Homer, N.Y., 1979, pp. 167, 176, 293)..In all of these works the faces of the hunched over fishermen are hidden as they go about their work, anonymous elements in a timeless story of toil and harvest.
The present watercolor shares the same compositional and thematic ingredients as these other works, including such details as the floating barrel markers and the stack of oars protruding from the boat's prow. Unlike some of Homer's more finished watercolors on the fishing theme, it is done sketchily and shows his ability to work this medium with both facitliyt and force. The strong diagonal of the boat anchors the composition, while the fluid washes of pale blue and grey evoke the sheen of light on water and the shimmer of the fish as they are hauled aboard. In certain areas Homer has rubbed and scraped the surface to bring out more white and thus more luminosity.
Passage about Breaking Wave on Shore Line, 1895- page 72
The sea was a profound source of inspiration for Homer, particularly in his later years at Prout's Neck when he treated it again and again, dispensing with genre detail and focusing instead on the elemental power of the sea and the drama of its eternal struggle with the land. It was the sea at its stormiest and most ferocious that Homer liked best: its placid moods, favored by the Impressionists, left him unmoved. In its agitated force he found a symbol of life itself, and in his depictions he cast aside all romamic conventions to provide a forcefully direct experience. He takes the viewer into the clash between sea and rocks, making us feel the surge of the waves, the ruggedness of the shore, and the power of their collision. For 27 years Homer studied the waves at Prout's Neck under every condition of light and weather, often making watercolor studies such as Breaking Wave on Shoreline in order to capture a particular mood or lighting effect. Courbet is the only other 19th cemury realist who comes close in his seascapes to Homer's level of convincing involvement, but even he appears traditional by comparison.
In Breaking Wave on Shoreline Homer's primary concern seems to have been the problem of capturing light and spray on moving water. He accomplishes this aim with a loose interweaving of various blue, green, and grey tones of wash, leaving the white paper untouched in areas of most intense reflection. This painting belongs to a sub-series of marine pictures from the late 1880s and 90s which use the same compositional device of a diagonal of rocks at the lower left set in opposition to the churning action of the sea. Other works in this group include the great Northeaster of 1895 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Sunlight on the Coast of 1890 (Toledo Museum of Art).
The movement toward realism after the Civil War in the last quarter of the 19th century culminates in the work of Homer and Eakins. Homer was concerned with direct, straightforward representation of nature, unfettered by the romantic grandeur of Church and Bierstadt. His work moves from unsentimental illustrations of the Civil War to paintings and watercolors of man against nature, to metaphors of the larger human question of survival. Homer's work is that of a largely self-trained artist, influenced by the human condition itself. It is also the vision of a solitary, self sufficient man.
In 1889 and in subsequent years, Homer spent a few months in late summer or early fall in the Adirondacks, often with his brother Charles, going on fishing and camping trips, and making watercolors. The DMA's watercolor, Casting in the Falls (1889) was probably done on the first trip. The watercolors from the Adirondacks show a simplification in composition, often with just a single figure shown in a natural setting. Homer often used his camera to study different angles of vision, which may explain the angle used here for the figure of the fisherman. The cool light of the mountains is shown in the color choices and the transparent water. The simplification of the composition, the fluidity of the scene, and the concern for light are characteristics of Homer's work. The conflict of man and nature can be seen in the rushing, forceful water and broken tree limbs, as contrasted with the figure of the fisherman poised at the edge of the falls. This water color hints at the artist's later works, which have a more direct and urgent sense of confrontation and survival, as well as a sense of foreboding in the face of hostile nature.
Anne Bromberg, Description of Selected Works from the Collection, education files, 1987
Winslow Homer was born in 1836 in Boston and was raised in Cambridge. At the age of nineteen he was apprenticed to the Boston lithographer, J.H. Bufford. In 1858, Homer left Bufford to work as an illustrator for a Boston literary magazine. In 1860, Homer accepted a position working for Harper's Weekly. In 1867, Homer traveled to Paris where he was influenced by the work of Monet, Renoir, Manet and Japanese and Chinese prints. In the l870s Homer turned to depicting American country life in the tradition of American genre painting. In 1882 and 1883 Homer lived in England and executed drawings and watercolors of the North Sea. This experience significantly changed his style. When he returned to the U.S. he began executing dramatic watercolors and paintings of the sea and the fishermen of New England. Through his artwork, Homer was instrumental in establishing watercolor's reputation as a dignified means of expressing serious artistic intentions. In 1865 he helped to found the American Watercolor Society. In the later period of his life, he lived mainly in Maine, but he also traveled extensively.
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987. (FULL TEXT)
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
265936182: UMO. [Caption] Winslow Homer in 1880. Source: Napoleon Sarony, Uploaded by User:Hephaestos and User:Howcheng, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 15, 2016.
UMO tag added to note (EAS, 08/08/2016)
WEB RESOURCES
- Khan Academy~Watch this video from Khan Academy about one of Winslow Homer's fishing works, The Fog Warning (Halibut Fishing), 1885.
- Khan Academy~Watch this video from Khan Acadmy about a work by Homer that focuses on his depiction of water, Northeaster (1895, reworked by 1901).
- The American Museum of Fly Fishing~Learn more about Winslow Homer as an angler and artist from the American Museum of Fly Fishing.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
set operator as OR
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 2835
apply to constituents where id equals 2835
Category
rules_operator
OR
General Description
Born in Boston in 1836 and raised in Cambridge, Homer's artistic career began at age 19 with an apprenticeship in the lithography shop of J. H. Bufford. Attracting attention for his drawing skills, he left Bufford's at age 21, launching a career as free-lance illustrator for Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. In 1859 he moved to New York where he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design and took a few painting lessons with Frederic Rondel. Homer covered Abraham Lincoln's inauguration for Harper's and was sent to the Virginia front during the Civil War, from which experience he derived a number of illustrations and a series of paintings remarkable for their realism. In 1867, Homer traveled to Paris where he was influenced by the work of Monet, Renoir, Manet and Japanese and Chinese prints. Upon his return to the United States, he spent some time working in the country (mostly New England) painting both fashionable women in summer resorts and simpler scenes of rural farm life often featuring children.
He treated the same themes in illustrations, creating a carefully observed yet idyllic record of rural life in the 1860s and 70s. In 1865 he helped to found the American Watercolor Society. During the 1870s Homer gradually introduced themes of hunting in the Adirondacks and life among Blacks in rural Virginia. He spent 1881-82 near Tynemouth, England, a rugged fishing port on the North Sea, and here his subjects underwent a definitive shift, from tranquil genre scenes to watercolor sketches of the sea and the sturdy people making a living from it, for the first time intimating an awareness of the natural and human drama of survival. In 1883 he returned again to the States, settling in Prout's Neck on the Maine Coast. His work continued in its Tynemouth vein, depicting wild rather than inhabited nature in such subjects as the sea, forest, mountains, and lives of outdoor men. He made a number of excursions to Canada and the Adirondacks on hunting and fishing trips and traveled to such exotic locations as the Grand Banks, Nassau, the Carribean Islands, Cuba and Florida, recording his experiences in brilliant watercolor sketches. Homer was awarded several medals for his paintings in the 1890s and continued to paint through 1909. He died at Prout's Neck in 1910, already recognized as one of America's greatest and most original painters.
Adapted from
- Steven A. Nash, Dallas Collects American Paintings: Colonial to Early Modern, September 26- November 14, 1982, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts), 71.
- Gail Davitt, DMA unpublished material, 1986-87.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Khan Academy~Watch this video from Khan Academy about one of Winslow Homer's fishing works, The Fog Warning (Halibut Fishing), 1885.
- Khan Academy~Watch this video from Khan Acadmy about a work by Homer that focuses on his depiction of water, Northeaster (1895, reworked by 1901).
- The American Museum of Fly Fishing~Learn more about Winslow Homer as an angler and artist from the American Museum of Fly Fishing.
Notes
In contrast to the prevailing romanticism in which he grew up, Homer's viewpoint was naturalistic. He looked neither to the art of his predecessors nor that of his contemporaries for hints of how things should be done.
Winslow Homer had very little special training. He had illustrated for Harpers and had done a series of portraits for the Massachusetts Senate before going to "New York where he took night classes at the National Academy . For almost 17 years he contributed drawings to Harpers, genre compositions and pictorial records of army life during the Civil War. In his late forties he settled in Maine - taking winter excursions to the Bahama Islands, Cuba, and Florida - to achieve the peak in his artistic accomplishment both in his seascape canvases and his watercolor sketches.
Human interest in his canvases have always held the attention of the average observer, and the more discerning eye will recognize the unconventional quality of observation in them, their unforced and unaffected truth.
From Famous American Paintings assembled for the State Fair of Texas, 1948, exhibition cat from Piction
Casting in the Falls, 1889, watercolor, 14 X 20"
This work was probably executed on one of Homer's camping trips in the Adirondacks. In this particular work a single figure is silhouetted against the horizon, with the foreground and background flattened. The fluidity of watercolor is used to dramatize the violent movement and crashing water.
Biography taken from Dallas Collects American paintings, pp 71
Born in BostOn in 1836 and raised in Cambridge, Homer's artistic career began at age 19 with an apprenticeship in the lithography shop ofJ. H. Bufford. Attracting attention for his drawing skills, he len Bufford's at age 21, launching a career as free-lance illustratOr for Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. In 1859 he moved to New York where he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design and took a few painting lessons with Frederic Rondel. Homer covered Lincoln's inauguration for Harper's and was sent to the Virginia front during the Civil War, from which experience derived a number of illustrations and a series of paintings remarkable for their realism. Homer made his first trip abroad to France in 186<).67, and upon his return worked from late spring to early fall in the country (mostly New England) painting both fashionable women in summer resorts and simpler scenes of rural farm life often featuring children.
He treated the same themes in illustrations, creating a carefully observed yet idyllic record of rural life in the 1860s and 70s. During the 70s Homer gradually introduced themes of hunting in the Adirondacks and life among Blacks in rural Virginia. He spent 1881-82 near Tynemouth, England, a rugged fishing port on the North Sea, and here his subjects underwent a definitive shift, from tranquil genre scenes to watercolor sketches of the sea and the sturdy people making a living from it, for the first time intimating an awareness ofthe natural and human drama of survival. In 1883 he returned again to the States, settling in Prout's Neck on the Maine Coast. His work continued in its Tynemouth vein, depicting wild rather than inhabited nature in such subjects as the sea, forest, mountains, and lives of outdoor men. He made a number of excursions to Canada and the Adirondacks on hunting and fishing trips and traveled to such exotic locations as the Grand Banks, Nassau, the Carribean Islands, Cuba and Florida, recording his experiences in brilliant watercolor sketches. Homer was awarded several medals for his paintings in the 1890s and continued to paint through 1909. He died at Prout's Neck in 1910, already recognized as one of America's greatest and most original painters.
Passage about Herring Fishing, 1894
Although this watercolor is inscribed 1894, it relates very closely to a series of works Homer executed in 1884-85. One can therefore presume either that the inscription was added at a later date and is incorrect, or that Homer returned to his theme ten years after its inception to rework certain ideas.
While living in Tynemouth, England, Homer had grown to admire the hardy villagers who lived off the sea, and after he moved to Prout's Neck in 1883 he continued to explore this symbiotic man-and-the·sea subject with numerous works dealing with fishermen along the Maine coast. The fishing fleet at Prout's Neck was an old institution and the area's primary industry, with origins stretching back to the 17th century. When a huge herring run occured off its shores in 1884, Homer seized the opportunity to row out and sketch the large fleet in action. Several known studies of two fishermen in a dory wearing rain gear and pulling aboard nets of herring lead up to the major painting called The Herring Net (1885) in the Art Institute of Chicago (see Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work Of Winslow Homer, N.Y., 1979, pp. 167, 176, 293)..In all of these works the faces of the hunched over fishermen are hidden as they go about their work, anonymous elements in a timeless story of toil and harvest.
The present watercolor shares the same compositional and thematic ingredients as these other works, including such details as the floating barrel markers and the stack of oars protruding from the boat's prow. Unlike some of Homer's more finished watercolors on the fishing theme, it is done sketchily and shows his ability to work this medium with both facitliyt and force. The strong diagonal of the boat anchors the composition, while the fluid washes of pale blue and grey evoke the sheen of light on water and the shimmer of the fish as they are hauled aboard. In certain areas Homer has rubbed and scraped the surface to bring out more white and thus more luminosity.
Passage about Breaking Wave on Shore Line, 1895- page 72
The sea was a profound source of inspiration for Homer, particularly in his later years at Prout's Neck when he treated it again and again, dispensing with genre detail and focusing instead on the elemental power of the sea and the drama of its eternal struggle with the land. It was the sea at its stormiest and most ferocious that Homer liked best: its placid moods, favored by the Impressionists, left him unmoved. In its agitated force he found a symbol of life itself, and in his depictions he cast aside all romamic conventions to provide a forcefully direct experience. He takes the viewer into the clash between sea and rocks, making us feel the surge of the waves, the ruggedness of the shore, and the power of their collision. For 27 years Homer studied the waves at Prout's Neck under every condition of light and weather, often making watercolor studies such as Breaking Wave on Shoreline in order to capture a particular mood or lighting effect. Courbet is the only other 19th cemury realist who comes close in his seascapes to Homer's level of convincing involvement, but even he appears traditional by comparison.
In Breaking Wave on Shoreline Homer's primary concern seems to have been the problem of capturing light and spray on moving water. He accomplishes this aim with a loose interweaving of various blue, green, and grey tones of wash, leaving the white paper untouched in areas of most intense reflection. This painting belongs to a sub-series of marine pictures from the late 1880s and 90s which use the same compositional device of a diagonal of rocks at the lower left set in opposition to the churning action of the sea. Other works in this group include the great Northeaster of 1895 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Sunlight on the Coast of 1890 (Toledo Museum of Art).
The movement toward realism after the Civil War in the last quarter of the 19th century culminates in the work of Homer and Eakins. Homer was concerned with direct, straightforward representation of nature, unfettered by the romantic grandeur of Church and Bierstadt. His work moves from unsentimental illustrations of the Civil War to paintings and watercolors of man against nature, to metaphors of the larger human question of survival. Homer's work is that of a largely self-trained artist, influenced by the human condition itself. It is also the vision of a solitary, self sufficient man.
In 1889 and in subsequent years, Homer spent a few months in late summer or early fall in the Adirondacks, often with his brother Charles, going on fishing and camping trips, and making watercolors. The DMA's watercolor, Casting in the Falls (1889) was probably done on the first trip. The watercolors from the Adirondacks show a simplification in composition, often with just a single figure shown in a natural setting. Homer often used his camera to study different angles of vision, which may explain the angle used here for the figure of the fisherman. The cool light of the mountains is shown in the color choices and the transparent water. The simplification of the composition, the fluidity of the scene, and the concern for light are characteristics of Homer's work. The conflict of man and nature can be seen in the rushing, forceful water and broken tree limbs, as contrasted with the figure of the fisherman poised at the edge of the falls. This water color hints at the artist's later works, which have a more direct and urgent sense of confrontation and survival, as well as a sense of foreboding in the face of hostile nature.
Anne Bromberg, Description of Selected Works from the Collection, education files, 1987
Winslow Homer was born in 1836 in Boston and was raised in Cambridge. At the age of nineteen he was apprenticed to the Boston lithographer, J.H. Bufford. In 1858, Homer left Bufford to work as an illustrator for a Boston literary magazine. In 1860, Homer accepted a position working for Harper's Weekly. In 1867, Homer traveled to Paris where he was influenced by the work of Monet, Renoir, Manet and Japanese and Chinese prints. In the l870s Homer turned to depicting American country life in the tradition of American genre painting. In 1882 and 1883 Homer lived in England and executed drawings and watercolors of the North Sea. This experience significantly changed his style. When he returned to the U.S. he began executing dramatic watercolors and paintings of the sea and the fishermen of New England. Through his artwork, Homer was instrumental in establishing watercolor's reputation as a dignified means of expressing serious artistic intentions. In 1865 he helped to found the American Watercolor Society. In the later period of his life, he lived mainly in Maine, but he also traveled extensively.
Gail Davitt, biographical essays, education files, 1986-1987. (FULL TEXT)
rules
Apply To
Constituents
id
Equals
2835
source file
artists_and_designers-0149.xml.nores