Winslow Homer An American Illustrator Oil Painter Watercolorist

Winslow Homer An American Illustrator, Oil Painter & Watercolorist 1836 -1910

Born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 24, 1836

Boston in the 1800’s

Childhood • • • Winslow Homer was the second of three sons. At age 6 his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother Henrietta was an amateur watercolor painter and served as Winslow’s first art teacher. His father Charles was in the hardware store business but left when Winslow was 13 to seek his fortune in California and Europe. Winslow’s brothers were his best friends and he spent his childhood fishing and drawing scenes of rural life in Massachusetts.

Early Career • After high school, at the age of 19, Winslow’s father arranged for him to work as an apprentice to J. H. Bufford, a Boston lithographer. Lithography was an early form of print-making. • His first professional work was drawing illustrations for sheet music covers. • He found the work very boring and after finishing his 2 -year apprenticeship he began working as a freelance artist, vowing never to work for someone else again.

Illustrator • In 1857, at age 21, Winslow Homer began his 20 -year career as a freelance illustrator. • He drew images of Boston and rural New England life for magazines such as Ballou’s Pictorial and Harper’s Weekly. • Because photography was just coming into use, most magazines and newspapers still used wood engravings for their illustrations. • Wood engravings are made by drawing a picture onto a block of wood. A person trained as an engraver then cuts away the wood from the lines, so only the raised black lines remained. This is very difficult, highly skilled work.

• By 1859, Homer was getting so much work in New York City that he moved there and opened his own studio. • He attended painting classes at the National Academy of Design (his only formal art training) and quickly became a good oil painter. • When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harper’s Weekly sent him to the front lines to illustrate battles scenes and army life for the magazine.

• • • After the war, Homer returned to New York, where he continued working as an illustrator and began painting oils of children, women, and country life. He spent a year in Paris in 1867, where he did not study art formally, but his painting Prisoners from the Front was exhibited and highly praised. He liked to work alone and did not want to look at other artists’ work, including the French Impressionists who were becoming popular at that time.

The Bridle Path, 1868 In his oil paintings he applied some of the techniques used in his wood engraving illustrations, such as keeping faces and clothing in shadow, and setting figures against a light background.

Snap the Whip, Engraving in Harper’s Weekly, 1873 He also turned some of his engravings into oil paintings, such as this scene of farm children playing a game of Snap the Whip in the countryside.

Snap the Whip, 1873 Homer wanted to paint scenes exactly as he saw them. The colors and textures are very rich and realistic. The landscape behind the children can be described as Impressionistic, as the children are the focus.

Country School, 1871 Oil Paintings of Country Life, 1870’s The Four Leaf Clover, 1873 Boys in a Pasture, 1874

• Homer began working in watercolors in 1873, after spending a summer on the coast in Gloucester, Massachusetts. • Homer quit working as an illustrator in 1875 to devote himself full time to painting. Breezing Up, 1876

Gloucester Harbor paintings, 1880’s

Schooner at Sunset, 1880 In 1881, Homer moved to England to be alone and find inspiration. He spent two years living in coastal villages and began painting images of people living and working by the sea.

The Fog Warning, 1885 The Fisher Girl, 1894 Fisherfolk on the Beach at Cullercoats, 1881

• In the 1870 s Homer started to become more reclusive. He moved to Gloucester and lived in the Eastern Point Lighthouse for a time. • He enjoyed observing fishermen and women, the sea, and marine weather. • His watercolors were more popular than his oil paintings had been and he was able to successfully sell some of his paintings. • He vacationed in Florida, Cuba, and the Carribbean, where he continued to explore maritime subjects. • He moved to Prout’s Neck, Maine in 1883, where he lived the rest of his life on his family’s estate in a remodeled carriage house, 75 feet from the ocean. Sponge Fishermen, Bahamas, 1885 Eastern Point Light, 1880

Homer also spent time in the Adirondack Mountains of Northern New York, where he continued to explore his watercolor techniques. The Adirondack Guide, 1894 The Hudson River, 1892

West Point, Prout’s Neck, 1899 Sunlight on the Coast, 1890 Northeaster, 1895 Towards the end of his life, many of his seascapes were absent of human figures, focusing instead on waves crashing on rocks in varying types of light.

Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prout’s Neck studio. His final painting, Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River, remains unfinished. He is considered one of the great American watercolorists.