Birth Year : 1836
Death Year : 1910
Country : US
Winslow Homer, the son of a Boston hardware merchant, spent his childhood
fishing instead of studying art. His only early training was an apprenticeship
to a lithographer for whom he drew pretty girls to adorn the covers of
popular songs. By 1857, however, he was an illustrator for Harper's Weekly
drawing happy scenes of country life at first and then, during the Civil
War, pictures of the loneliness and the pastimes of soldiers far from home.
He painted his first oil during this period, again with almost no instruction;
for Homer believed that a man who wished to be an artist must not look
at other artists' work. Consequently, he remained resolutely alone, refusing
to have anything to do with European art.
After the war he returned to New York where he continued as an illustrator
and painted a series of genre pictures of children and country life. These
met with both enthusiastic public approval and some critical disapproval.
Often repeated by later critics, the complaint centered around being disturbed
by the simplicity and the force of Homer's statements. Like all artists
who work alone, Homer matured slowly, and as he matured, he lost interest
in portrayals of the land and children. In 1883, he moved from New York
to Maine where he set up a studio close to the wild and rocky coast and
began his series of watercolors of the sea and its people, before finally
losing interest in people altogether, and confining himself almost entirely
to "the lonely sea and the sky." His watercolors are so powerful that it
is difficult to believe that Homer was himself "a small, reserved gentleman,
quiet and unostentatious." His view of nature was severe and, even in the
scenes of tropical waters, brilliant in color, indicative of his belief
that man himself is nothing in comparison to the vastness of the ocean.
Homer's lofty point of view found fewer admirers than had his earlier,
more easily fathomed works but he was not without recognition even before
his death, in 1910, and is today ranked as one of the finest of the world's
watercolorists.
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Winslow Homer
Herring Net, The
Winslow Homer
Breezing Up
Winslow Homer
Boys in a Pasture
Winslow Homer
Fog Warning
Winslow Homer
Breezing Up
View all Winslow Homer
Books about Winslow Homer |
