Musée No:583.191
Regular price £25.00Two Boys Watching Schooners
Artist: Winslow Homer
Dated: 1880
Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is regarded by many as the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century. Many of his dazzling watercolours concentrate on the beauty, force, and drama of the sea. He originally trained as a commercial illustrator and lithographer working on repetitive work such as sheet music covers etc but in 1857 his freelance career took off. In 1859 Harper’s Weekly Magazine sent him to cover the front lines of the American Civil War (1861–1865), where he sketched battle scenes and camp life, the quiet moments as well as the chaotic ones of the camp, commanders and army. Homer also illustrated women during wartime, and showed the effects of the war on the home front. The war work was dangerous and exhausting. Although the drawings did not get much attention at the time, they mark Homer's expanding skills from illustrator to painter. ). In 1875, Homer quit working as a commercial illustrator and vowed to survive on his paintings and watercolors alone.
In the early 1880s, Homer increasingly desired solitude, and his art took on a new intensity. In 1881, he travelled to England and after passing briefly through London, he settled in Cullercoats, a village near Tynemouth on the North Sea, remaining there from the spring of 1881 to November 1882. He was struck by the strenuous and courageous lives of its inhabitants, mainly women, sometimes depicted poignantly, standing at the water’s edge, awaiting the return of their men. When Winslow returned to New York, both he and his art were greatly changed.
In 1883, Homer moved to Prouts Neck, Maine (in Scarborough), and lived seventy-five feet from the ocean. During the rest of the mid-1880s, Homer painted his monumental sea scenes. His Prouts Neck studio, a National Historic Landmark, is now owned by the Portland Museum of Art, which offers tours.
