Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer showed America without pathos: soldiers, schoolchildren, fishermen – and again and again, the sea.

Life

Born in Boston in 1836, he trained as a lithographer and worked as an illustrator for “Harper’s Weekly”, which sent him to the front in the Civil War. Afterwards he painted scenes of rural life. A stay in the English fishing village of Cullercoats in 1881–82 changed his art: he turned to the struggle between people and the sea. From 1883 he lived at Prouts Neck on the coast of Maine, where he died in 1910.

Style & technique

Homer painted clearly and forcefully, with strong contrasts and a love of the outdoors. In his watercolours – from trips to the Adirondacks, Florida, the Bahamas and Cuba – he worked freely and luminously. His oil paintings of the sea are powerful: waves, rocks and people in danger.

Look closely

  • The story: what has just happened – and what is about to happen?
  • The water: foam, waves and light in a few confident strokes.
  • The watercolours: how much white paper does he leave untouched?

Timeline

  • 1836: Born in Boston.
  • 1861–1865: Civil War illustrator for “Harper’s Weekly”.
  • c. 1874: “School Time”.
  • 1881–1882: Stay in Cullercoats, England.
  • 1910: Dies at Prouts Neck, Maine.

Works in the museum