Winslow Homer is recognized as a dominant figure in nineteenth-century American art and his era’s foremost exponent of realism. Based on direct observation, his works of the 1860s and 1870s reveal actualities of American life that went unrecorded by other artists. Homer’s art from the 1880s through his death in 1910 dealt primarily with mortality and the forces of nature, conveying these essential themes in potent images in which light, shadow, and composition play powerful expressive roles. Today, Homer remains one of the most esteemed and cherished of American artists of all time.

Homer was born in Boston in a long-established New England family and grew up in nearby Cambridge, where he led an active outdoor life. Encouraged by his parents to pursue an artistic career, he became an apprentice in the Boston lithographic firm of J.H. Bufford at age nineteen. His only formal training consisted of a few drawing classes in Brooklyn, a brief period of study at the National Academy of Design, and a number of private classes with the painter Frederick Rondel in Boston. After three years of training at Bufford’s, he left the firm to become a freelance illustrator. His drawings were readily accepted by Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion and later by Harper’s Weekly, the best magazine of its time. In 1859, Homer moved to New York City, where he became a leading illustrator for Harper’s.

During the Civil War, Harper’s Weekly sent Homer to Virginia, where he drew a great number of scenes of the front. His sketches became the basis for some of his earliest oil paintings, including his famous Prisoners from the Front, (1866; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Featuring life in camps rather than battlefields, Homer’s Civil War scenes are among the most powerful and authentic records of Union troop experience produced.

Homer began submitting paintings to the annual exhibitions of the National Academy of Design in 1863 and was elected a full Academician two years later. In 1866, he traveled to Europe, where he spent ten months in France. Although the details of his activities on this sojourn are scarce, it is known that he visited the Exposition Universelle to see his Prisoners from the Front, which was on display. At the time, he probably viewed the separate exhibition of works by Gustave Courbet, France’s leading realist. He may also have been exposed to the bold, still-controversial art of Edouard Manet.

On his return to the United States, Homer settled in New York, where he lived for the next thirteen years. In 1872, he moved to the famous Tenth Street Studio Building, which was home to many Hudson River School artists and later to William Merritt Chase. During the 1870s, Homer explored a variety of subjects, including scenes of rural life and recreational activities as well as themes of childhood. His works were a reflection of both his own nationalistic concerns and the general post-war nostalgia for America’s past. Unlike the anecdotal sentimentality found in the work of many of his contemporaries, such as J.G. Brown, Homer created genre paintings [such as the two versions of Snap the Whip, (1872; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio)] that exemplify his lifelong penchant for realism coupled with an exacting and carefully observed portrayal of light and shadow.

During the late 1860s and 1870s, Homer painted in a number of different locales. He worked in upstate New York at Saratoga Springs, Lake George, and the Adirondack Mountains. In the summers of 1873 and 1880, he spent time in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was during his 1873 stay in Gloucester that he first worked in watercolor. He would use the medium for the rest of his career, creating some of the finest watercolors produced in America during his era. In 1874, he exhibited for the first time at the American Society of Painters in Watercolor. Three years later, he became a member of the organization. In the mid-1870s, Homer visited Virginia, producing a number of images of former slaves. These works are viewed today as the American analogues of paintings depicting peasants by members of the French Barbizon School. During a stay in 1878 at Houghton Farm, the home of one of his patrons in Mountainville, New York, Homer created a number of his finest early watercolors.

Homer made a second trip to Europe in 1881. Unlike most of his fellow American artists, who flocked to Paris, Homer went to England, spending almost two years at Cullercoats, a small fishing village on the North Sea. In Cullercoats, Homer worked almost exclusively in watercolor, developing a broader, more fluid technique and using a darker palette. He also replaced his earlier native genre subjects with more serious themes concerning the local fishing-folk and their relationship with the sea. In key paintings such as Fog Warning, (1885; (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), rendered after his return to America, he explored the theme of man versus nature, which would emerge more fully in his later art. Revisionist art historians suggest that the English Tyne School as well as the work of Joseph Mallord Turner and John Constable were possible sources of influence on Homer’s development during this period.

Homer returned to America in November of 1882. In 1884, a desire for solitude coupled with a generally reclusive nature, contributed to his decision to move to the isolated locale of Prout’s Neck, Maine, which would remain his home for the rest of his life. Here he created his great series of views of the sea, which express the theme of mortality with the dramatic imagery of crashing waves against jagged rocks. Among his classic seascapes from this period are Cannon Rock, (1895; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Northeaster (1895; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). During this last period of his career, Homer also made frequent trips to warmer climes including Cuba, Nassau, Bermuda, and Florida in order to escape the harshness of Maine’s winters. In watercolors created on these trips, he conveyed the brilliant light and vibrant colors of the tropics.

Winslow Homer died in Prout’s Neck in 1910. His works may be found in important private and public collections across the country including: the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts; the Musée D’Orsay, Paris; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts; the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.