A Uniquely American Artist

Winslow Homer documented the sea, the land and the life of 19th Century America

This painting, “Breezing Up, A Fair Wind” (1873-76), reveals the lifelong fascination Homer had for the sea and for the souls who ventured out onto it. Here he depicts a father and his three boys out for a brisk afternoon sail.

Have you ever looked at a scene in nature and wished you could reproduce it as you experienced it? Not as a camera might see it but in a way more vivid and more meaningful, in the same sort of way that a great artist might see it; capturing all the subtle colors and shapes and feelings that a camera would miss?

Winslow Homer saw more than a camera could see and applied it to his oil paintings and watercolors. He saw past physical form in a way which captured the human experience of his subjects … of moonlight on the water, of fresh-cut hay, of a howling gale, of being alone.

“Boys in a Pasture” (1874) reflects a simpler time before the Civil War. This painting was featured on a postage stamp in 1962. Homer’s appreciation for form, mass and balance can be seen in the triangle formed by the two boys.

Homer was born in Boston and raised in a New England culture of upper middle class leisure. His mother, who was an accomplished watercolorist, taught him the elements of painting at an early age. In 1863, he was commissioned by Harpers Weekly to go to Virginia as an artist correspondent and paint scenes of the ongoing Civil War. In 1866, a year after the war ended, he painted an actual scene from that conflict titled “Prisoners from the Front”, in which his personal friend, General Francis Barlow, confronts three Confederates he captured at the Battle of Petersburg, VA, April 2, 1865.

“Prisoners From the Front” was Homer’s magnum opus as a painter in oils. Here one can almost feel the haughty disdain the Union general has for his ragtag captives as well as the cool defiance of the uniformed Confederate.

Much of Homers best work reflects his fascination with the sea and its restless energy and beauty. He captured its varied moods from the cold swells of heavy seas along the New England coast to the placid, aquamarine water in the Bahamas and Florida, including the Keys.

Homer’s works can project an almost jewel-like quality, from “Lifeline” (top left) to “Sloop, Nassau” (bottom right). The painting of the sextant reader on the ship’s deck is titled “Eight Bells” . The scene at lower left is on Florida’s Homosassa River and titled “Red Shirt”.

Homer prefered his own company and found the greatest comfort in solitude. He never married and, although he was not unsociable, he liked living alone. Many of his watercolors depict the lone individual in a remote setting and probably was the thing with which he most identified.

The capacity of lone individuals to be at one with the natural world and to survive it was a recurring theme in Homer’s work.

Although his personal life was not marked by epic events, his works can captivate the imagination in epic ways. You come back to them often and you are drawn into a world of human events that took place in the natural world a century and a half ago. You feel the gathering storm before a stormy night or smell the salt air of a sunlit Bahamian bay

“Stowing Sail” reveal’s Homer’s affection for the self-reliant lone individual. I can relate. This watercolor print from one of his Bahamian trips hung on the wall in my business office for 21 years and cheered me daily through numerous trials.

Homer’s life was revealed much more on paper and canvas that in events. We would properly consider him reclusive and to that give credit for the images he brought to life at the tip of his brush. One of the young men he personally influenced was the great American illustrtator, N.C. Wyeth who also influenced his son, Andrew Wyeth.

“Moonlight”

Winslow Homer didn’t leave behind a volume of witty or wise quotations but here's one he did that bears mention:

“Look at Nature, work independently and solve your own problems.”

Below the paywall is your recipe for this edition. It came to mind while writing this episode and thinking of the crab fishermen hauling in their crab pots around the coast of Maine, scenes so familiar to Homer.