Winslow Homer

About Winslow Homer

One of the most universally acclaimed realist painters America has produced, Homer is particularly known for his scenes of outdoor life. The Boston-born artist began his career as an illustrator for Harper's (after an apprenticeship in lithography), reporting pictorially from the Civil War battlefront.

One of the most universally acclaimed realist painters America has produced, Homer is particularly known for his scenes of outdoor life. The Boston-born artist began his career as an illustrator for Harper's (after an apprenticeship in lithography), reporting pictorially from the Civil War battlefront. The war and its aftermath became a source of imagery for him as he began to concentrate on oil painting, making his first visit to Europe in late 1866, and achieving rapid critical success. While summering in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1873, Homer first began to paint seriously in watercolor; it would eventually become his primary medium, allowing him to explore nuances of light, color, and composition in a fluid and spontaneous manner. Homer's outdoor genre scenes encompassed a variety of subjects, including children and young adults (often in summertime leisure pursuits), wilderness guides, and rural blacks in the post-Civil War era. In 1881, he spent almost two years in the fishing village of Cullercoats, on the coast of England, depicting local residents in their daily activities. Increasingly, Homer began painting the sea, and the struggle between man and the wilder side of nature became a dominant theme for him as he moved permanently to Prout's Neck, a high, rocky, secluded spot on Maine's Atlantic coast. An avid outdoorsman, Homer took annual fishing trips to the Adirondacks, Florida, Bermuda, and the Bahamas, and all of these places provided subject matter for his work. Homer's oils are powerfully painted, employing strong contrasts and making full use of the weight and bulk of the oil medium, while his watercolors reveal a lighter, more sensitive touch, capturing his subjects with a fluency and immediacy that influenced generations of artists to come.

Art Fair Career Timeline

Works in Museum Collections

Spielende Knaben

Europeana

Homer, The Veteran in a New Field

Europeana

Homer, Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide)

Europeana

Collection data via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums (CC BY), and Europeana

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