The Studio Journal: Favorite Artists 18

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

Favorite Artists 18 - Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, ca. 1870

If ever there was a quintessential American artist, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) fills the bill. Mr. Homer was born and grew up in Massachusetts, in fairly middle class circumstances. His father was a businessman always seeking a big fortune. His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist who taught Mr. Homer his first lessons. Eventually he was apprenticed to a lithographer after he finished high school. Leaving apprenticeship after a couple of years, he opened his own illustration studio in Boston, where he was immediately successful. Most of his work in those years was graphic--wood engraving primarily. By 1859 he lived in New York and kept a studio in the famous Tenth Street Studio Building in Greenwich Village, the first purpose-built studio building. Although Mr. Homer is said to have been mostly self taught, it's also true that he attended classes at the National Academy of Design and learned at least the rudiments of oil painting by Frederic Rondel, who taught there.

Harper's Weekly illustration--"Sharpshooter on Picket Duty"

"Home, Sweet Home," oil, 1866

Although his family hoped he would travel to Europe to study painting, he instead secured a position with Harper's magazine making pictures of the Civil War, many of them wood engravings. He spent time at the front, drawing and collecting material that went into studio works like "Home Sweet Home" which he exhibited at the National Academy of Design to considerable acclaim, and an oil version of "Sharpshooter on Picket Duty," among others. But even though he did oil paintings of war subjects, much of his postwar output depicted women, children and rural settings, despite his studio being in New York.

"Boys in a Pasture," oil, 1874

Following the war he did spend nearly a year in France, though he didn't study formally but spent time doing drawings for Harper's, seeing the art that was current and doing his own outdoor works.

"Snap the Whip," 1872

Through the decade of the 1870s Mr. Homer focused on rural subjects, including one of his most popular works, "Snap the Whip," among a number of others that remain popular if nostalgic.

"Breezing Up," 1873-78

Something happened to Mr. Homer--perhaps a romantic loss--because in the late 1870s he retreated from much social contact. He lived in Gloucester and the UK before moving permanently to Maine in 1883. His studio was near the ocean, in Prout's Neck, and it was there that he painted a number of monumental works, including one of my particular favorites,"Undertow," a depiction of an event he'd witnessed elsewhere. Two women are being dragged from the surf by two lifeguards.