Winslow Homer, Gloucester Harbor (1873)

Winslow Homer, Gloucester Harbor
oil on canvas, 1873
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
(http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/february-1879-deadliest-month-gloucester-fishing-fleet/)
no copyright infringement intended

I wish to thank here Deborah Schafer-v who shared this on Facebook for us.



(Winslow Homer)

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer (1936-1910)
photo by Napoleon Sarony
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_by_Sarony.jpeg)
no copyright infringement intended

Largely self-taught, Winslow Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations.

(wiki)

• Gloucester Harbor (1873)
• Blown Away (c. 1888)
• The Turtle Pond (1898)
• High Cliff, Coast of Maine (1894) 
• Homer, Hopper, Brown

(The Moderns)

(Napoleon Sarony)

Winslow Homer, Blown Away (c.1888)

Winslow Homer, Blown Away
watercolor and graphite on paper, c.1888
Brooklyn Museum
(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=530803720307480)
no copyright infringement intended

I would like to thank here Marcia Bujold from which I share this image. I love the art of Winslow Homer. It has in the same time energy, delicacy, a dreaming mood, subtlety, it's incredible. And I love Maine.

Here is what someone commented on this image, speaking of another work of Winslow Homer, there is a pastel he did of two women walking along the coast of Maine, and the wind is blowing their long skirts, and one is knitting. It is one of my favorites, along with all of the rest, and the one I chose to do when we were assigned to emulate an artist of our choice. Most did choose the Impressionists, but I fancied Homer for some odd reason...a very good reason, I think...It is a charcoal...blacks, greys, reds, me thinks. Well I just love him and I love the boats on the sea.... (Désirée Krueger)


(Brooklyn Museum)

(Winslow Homer)

Winslow Homer - The Turtle Pond (1898)

Winslow Homer - The Turtle Pond, 1898
watercolor
Brooklyn Museum
(http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=778)
no copyright infringement intended

Winslow Homer does not stop to amaze me with each of his paintings that I come across. He has in his art a dimension that I could name, well, Homeric! I mean, unexpectedly powerful and modern sometimes, when you would have expected (as in other of his works) just a story told within the limits of tradition.


(Brooklyn Museum)

(Winslow Homer)

Winslow Homer - High Cliff, Coast of Maine (1894)

Winslow Homer - High Cliff, Coast of Maine, 1894

I had the opportunity to see a lot of works of Winslow Homer, and I was thinking I knew his style, so I was surprised to find on the web a strikingly modern painting of him: After the Hurricane (made in 1899, hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago).






(American Art and Portraiture)

(Winslow Homer)

Homer, Hopper, Brown

Winslow Homer at the Washington DC National Gallery of Art

The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside), 1870

Hound and Hunter, 1892

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873-1876

Compare the sailing picture of Homer with the one of Edward Hopper, from Corcoran:

Edward Hopper - Ground Swell, 1939

More than fifty years between Homer and Hopper. They share some similarities, though only up to a point. Hopper came each year in Massachusetts or Maine and produced there some of his masterpieces. Winslow Homer devoted all his mature years to the landscapes of Maine. Both were realists: however the realism of twentieth century is other thing than the one of the ninetieth.

I think at another comparison, between Winslow Homer and his contemporary, John George Brown, who painted sceneries from the neighboring Vermont. I saw only a painting of Brown, at an exhibition at Phillips. The guy was definitely much more idyllic than Winslow Homer. Here are images of some of Brown's works:

Heading Out, 1872

Claiming the Shot after the Hunt in the Adirondacks

The Longshoremen's Noon, 1879

Cornered, 1899

Boat Builder, c.1904

The best known paintings of Brown are perhaps those depicting country boys and girls, with sympathy and a bit of mild humor. Look at his shoeshine boys:

Shoeshine Boy, 1884

Can't Make It Out

(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)

(Winslow Homer)

(Hopper)