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Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, Homer was the second of three sons of Charles Savage Homer and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from long lines of New Englanders. His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist and Homer’s first teacher, and she and her son had a close relationship throughout their lives. Homer took on many of her traits, including her quiet, strong-willed, terse, sociable nature; her dry sense of humor; and her artistic talent.
Homer had a happy childhood, growing up mostly in then rural Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an average student, but his art talent was on display early. Homer’s father was a volatile, restless businessman who was always looking to “make a killing”. When Homer was thirteen, Charles gave up the hardware store business to seek a fortune in the California gold rush. When that failed, Charles left his family and went to Europe to raise capital for other get-rich-quick schemes that didn’t materialize.
After Homer’s high school graduation, his father saw an ad in the newspaper and arranged for an apprenticeship. Homer’s apprenticeship to a Boston commercial lithographer at the age of 19, was a formative but “treadmill experience”. He worked repetitively on sheet music covers and other commercial work for two years. By 1857, his freelance career was underway after he turned down an offer to join the staff of Harper’s Weekly. “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone”, Homer later stated, “I have had no master, and never shall have any.”
Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. He contributed to magazines such as Ballou’s Pictorial and Harper’s Weekly, at a time when the market for illustrations was growing rapidly, and when fads and fashions were changing quickly. His early works, mostly commercial engravings of urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively figure groupings – qualities that remained important throughout his career. His quick success was mostly due to this strong understanding of graphic design and also to the adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.
In 1859, he opened a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City, the artistic and publishing capital of the United States. Until 1863 he attended classes at the National Academy of Design, and studied briefly with Frederic Rondel, who taught him the basics of painting. In only about a year of self-training, Homer was producing excellent oil work. His mother tried to raise family funds to send him to Europe for further study but instead Harper’s sent Homer to the front lines of the American Civil War (1861 – 1865), where he sketched battle scenes and camp life, the quiet moments as well as the murderous ones. His initial sketches were of the camp, commanders, and army of the famous Union officer, Major General George B. McClellan, at the banks of the Potomac River in October, 1861.
Although the drawings did not get much attention at the time, they mark Homer’s expanding skills from illustrator to painter. Like with his urban scenes, Homer also illustrated women during war time, and showed the effects of the war on the home front. The war work was dangerous and exhausting. Back at his studio, however, Homer would regain his strength and re-focus his artistic vision. He set to work on a series of war-related paintings based on his sketches, among them Sharpshooter on Picket Duty (1862), Home, Sweet Home (1863), and Prisoners from the Front (1866). He exhibited Home, Home, Sweet Home at the National Academy and its remarkable critical reception resulted in its quick sale and in the artist being elected an Associate Academician, then a full Academician in 1865. After the war, Homer turned his attention primarily to scenes of childhood and young women, reflecting his own, and the country’s, nostaglia for simpler times.
At nearly the beginning of his painting career, the twenty-seven year old Homer demonstrated a maturity of feeling, depth of perception, and mastery of technique which was immediately recognized. His realism was objective, true to nature, and emotionally controlled. One critic wrote, “Winslow Homer is one of those few young artists who make a decided impression of their power with their very first contributions to the Academy…He at this moment wields a better pencil, models better, colors better, than many whom, were it not improper, we could mention as regular contributors to the Academy.” And of Home, Sweet Home specifically, “There is no clap-trap about it. The delicacy and strength of emotion which reign throughout this little picture are not surpassed in the whole exhibition.” “It is a work of real feeling, soldiers in camp listening to the evening band, and thinking of the wives and darlings far away. There is no strained effect in it, no sentimentality, but a hearty, homely actuality, broadly, freely, and simply worked out.”
Back in the U.S. in November 1882, Homer showed his English watercolors in New York. Critics noticed the change in style at once, “He is a very different Homer from the one we knew in days gone by”, now his pictures “touch a far higher plane…They are works of High Art.” Homer’s women were no longer “dolls who flaunt their millinery” but “sturdy, fearless, fit wives and mothers of men” who are fully capable of enduring the forces and vagaries of nature along side their men.
In 1883, Homer moved to Prout’s Neck, Maine (in Scarborough) and lived at his family’s estate in the remodeled carriage house just seventy-five feet from the ocean. During the rest of the mid-1880’s, Homer painted his monumental sea scenes. In Undertow (1886), depicting the dramatic rescue of two female bathers by two male lifeguards, Homer’s figures “have the weight and authority of classical figures”. In Eight Bells (1886), two sailors carefully take their bearings on deck, calmly appraising their position and by extension, their relationship with the sea; they are confident in their seamanship but respectful of the forces before them. Other notable paintings among these dramatic struggle-with-nature images are Banks Fisherman, The Gulf Stream, Rum Cay, Mending the Nets, and Searchlight, Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba. Some of these he repeated as etchings.
At fifty years of age, Homer had become a “Yankee Robinson Crusoe, cloistered on his art island” and “a hermit with a brush”. These paintings established Homer, as the New York Evening Post wrote, “in a place by himself as the most original and one of the strongest of American painters.” But despite his critical recognition, Homer’s work never achieved the popularity of traditional Salon pictures or of the flattering portraits by John Singer Sargent. Many of the sea pictures took years to sell and “Undertow” only earned him $400.
In these years, Homer received emotional sustenance primarily from his mother, brother Charles, and sister-in-law Martha (“Mattie”). After his mother’s death, Homer became a “parent” for his aging but domineering father and Mattie became his closest female intimate. In the winters of 1884-5, Homer ventured to warmer locations in Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas, and did a series of watercolors as part of a commission for Century Magazine. He replaced the turbulent green storm-tossed sea of Proust’s Neck with the sparkling blue skies of the Caribbean, and the hardy New Englanders with the leisurely Black natives, further expanding his watercolor technique, subject matter, and palette. His tropical stays inspired and refreshed him in much the same way as Paul Gauguin’s trips to Tahiti. A (1885) is one of the best examples of these watercolors. Once again, his freshness and originality were praised by critics, but proved too advanced for the traditional art buyers and he “looked in vain for profits.” Homer lived frugally, however, and fortunately, his affluent brother Charles provided financial help when needed.
Additionally, Homer found inspiration in a number of summer trips to the North Woods Club, near the hamlet of Minerva, New York in the Adirondack Mountains. It was on these fishing vacations that he experimented freely with the watercolor medium, producing works of the utmost vigor and subtlety, hymns to solitude, nature, and to outdoor life. Homer doesn’t shrink from the savagery of blood sports nor the struggle for survival. The color effects are boldly and facilely applied. In terms of quality and invention, Homer’s achievements as a watercolorist are unparalleled: “Homer had used his singular vision and manner of painting to create a body of work that has not been matched.”
In 1893, Homer painted one of his most famous “Darwinian” works, The Fox Hunt, which depicts a flock of starving crows descending on a fox slowed by deep snow. This was Homer’s largest painting and it was immediately purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, his first painting in a major American museum collection. In Huntsman and Dogs (1891), a lone, impassive hunter, with his yelping dogs at his side, heads home after a hunt, with deer skins slung over his right shoulder. Another late work, The Gulf Stream (1899), shows a Black sailor adrift in a damaged boat, surrounded by sharks and an impending maelstrom.
By 1900, Homer finally reached financial stability, as his paintings fetched good prices from museums and he began to receive rents from real estate properties. He also became free of the responsibilities of caring for his father who had died two years earlier. Homer continued producing excellent watercolors, mostly on trips to Canada and the Caribbean. Other late works include seascapes absent of human figures, mostly of waves crashing against rocks in varying light. In his last decade, he at times followed the advice he gave a student artist in 1907, “Leave rocks for your old age-they’re easy”.
Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prout’s Neck studio and was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His painting, Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River, remains unfinished.
His Prout’s Neck studio is now owned by the Portland Museum of Art.
Read moreShowing 1–100 of 552 results
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $409.00Snap the Whip 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $459.00The Veteran in a New Field 1865
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00The Gulf Stream 1899
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Right and Left 1909
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Fox Hunt 1893
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $359.00The Herring Net 1895
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00The Life Line, 1884
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00The Fog Warning 1885
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Undertow 1886
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $449.00Croquet Scene 1866
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $419.00A Game of Croquet 1866
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $409.00Croquet Players, 1865
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $419.00Dad’s Coming! 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $389.00Gloucester Harbor, 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Gloucester Harbor 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Eight Bells 1886
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00Mount Washington 1869
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $379.00The Bridle Path, White Mountains 1868
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00The Cotton Pickers, 1876
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00A Light on the Sea, 1897
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $359.00The Flirt, 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $399.00Crossing the Pasture
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Dressing for the Carnival 1877
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $409.00Girl with hay rake, 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00In the Garden (Rustic Courtship), 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Farmer with a Pitchfork 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Sleigh Ride
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Saco Bay 1896
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Signal of Distress
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Prisoners from the Front 1866
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $449.00Rainy Day in Camp 1871
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $449.00Summer Night, 1890
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00Sunset Fires 1880
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00The Adirondack guide 1894
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00The Bright Side 1865
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $359.00The Gale
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00Two Guides 1877
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00Old Mill (The Morning Bell) 1871
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $399.00Peach Blossoms, 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Peach Blossoms 1879
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Rowing Home 1890
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00The Blue Boat 1892
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Long Branch, New Jersey 1869
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Girl in the Hammock 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Lost on the Grand Banks 1885
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $359.00The Country School 1871
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $499.00Moonlight 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00The Four Leaf Clover 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00The Butterfly 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Bear and Canoe 1895
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Sunlight and Shadow
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide) 1870
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $389.00The Lookout – “All’s Well” 1896
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00Taking Sunflower to Teacher 1875
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00The Busy Bee, 1875
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $269.00An Open Window 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00Reverie, 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00At the Window 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00The Nurse 1867
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $359.00The Red School House 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Waverly Oaks 1864
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00The Butterfly Girl 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Song of the Lark 1876
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00The Reaper 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00The return of the Gleaner 1867
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00Woman Sewing 1876
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00The Studio 1867
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00Beach scene 1869
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00Blowing the Horn at Seaside, 1870
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Mending the Nets, 1882
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Summer 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $389.00Autumn 1877
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Girl and Laurel, 1879
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Woman and Elephant, 1877
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $299.00The Fisher Girl 1894
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $259.00The Dinner Horn 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $289.00Children Under a Palm Tree 1885
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $379.00Artists Sketching in the White Mountains, 1868
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Camp Fire 1880
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Portrait of Helena de Kay 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00Girl reading on a stone porch 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00A temperance meeting 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Apple Picking 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Below Zero 1894
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $279.00Saddle Horse in Farm Yard
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $279.00Gargoyles at Notre Dame, 1867
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00Marine 1881
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $319.00Mink Pond, 1891
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00The Chestnut tree, 1878
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $329.00Boys in a Pasture 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $349.00Sparrow Hall
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $439.00East Hampton Beach, Long Island, 1874
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $519.00The sand dune 1872
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00A Clam-Bake 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $449.00A Basket of Clams 1873
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $309.00Perils of the Sea 1881
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00A Fresh Breeze, 1881
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $369.00Coast Scene, with Boats on the Beach, 1881
By Winslow HomerSizes starting at $339.00