A Tribute to Winslow Homer

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The Herring Net

"Homer painted the sea for the first time in history as it really looked"
N.C. Wyeth

Crab Fishing, 1883

The life I have chosen gives me my full hours of enjoyment for the balance of my life.
The Sun will not rise, or set, without my notice, and thanks.
- Winslow Homer,
A letter to his brother Charles

Driftwood, 1909

Once created, the wave or the arc of a wave begins its journey through the sea. Countless vibrations precede it, countless vibrations follow after. It approaches the continent, swings into the coast line, courses ashore, breaks, dissolves, is gone.

The innermost water it last inhabited flow back in marbly foam to become a body to another beat, and to be again flung down. So it goes night and day , and will go till the secret heart of earth strikes out its last slow beat and the last wave dissolves upon the last forsaken shore.

Boy In a Boatyard, 1873

Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1876

Homer's early works had many curious parallels with that of the French impressionists, but they were not the result of influence, for impressionism had not yet been born in France. He was an independent American pioneer of impressionism.
- Lloyd Goodrich,
"American Watercolor and Winslow Homer" 1944

The Fog Warning, 1885

Men who are accustomed to danger occupy a mental attitude towards it that has no room for melodramatic pose. Simple, sober, the unconscious hero of the picture turns to get the bearings of his schooner as he bends to his oars with all the steadiness of a man who has a long way to row and who must neither waste his strength in spurts nor lose his head. Small amidst the waves of the Atlantic looks his dory, far away seems the vessel, hard and cruel is the complexion of the sea. . . .
-William Howe Downes,
"American Paintings in the Boston Art Museum,"
Brush and Pencil

Eight Bells, 1887
Etching

"I have had not master; and never shall have any"
- Homer

Kissing The Moon, 1904
Oil on Canvas

Sometimes it is asked, "What might not Winslow Homer have done if he had had a thorough art education at the beginning of his career?" I fancy that those who ask this question do not know what a great school Nature is when the pupil is a persistent searcher for truth and has the strength of purpose that has enabled Mr. Homer to find adequate forms of expression in his own way.
-William A Coffin,
Century Magazine, September 1899

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