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The Vivid Watercolor Palette of Winslow Homer
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11209 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1986 |
1,860 Words |
| Author
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Sarah Ban Breathnach
Sarah Ban Breathnach, arts and living editor with Radio
America, is the originator of Mrs. Sharp's Traditions, a
creative family-living radio program and a series of
Victorian family workshops, both of which revive
old-fashioned pastimes and traditions for modern family
life. |
In 1863, when Winslow Homer was contemplating whether or not to abandon a lucrative and successful career as a free-lance illustrator for the more precarious existence of a full-time painter, he confided to his older brother Charles that, if he did not sell his first two oil paintings, he would give up painting altogether and finally accept a staff position with Harper's Weekly.
Much to Homer's delight, the paintings were sold almost as soon as he placed them in an exhibition. Buoyed by these sales (which he took as a sign he should continue painting) and generally favorable reviews of other works, he continued to pursue a career as a painter, completing three years later the great canvas that would first make him famous: Prisoners from the Front. This was a Civil War scene of captured Confederate soldiers, which, coming at a time when the treatment of prisoners was an emotional and controversial issue, created a sensation that won the artist international acclaim in Victorian art circles and instant celebrity with the general public.
It was only years later that Winslow Homer learned that the secret benefactor who had launched his career with the fateful purchase of those early oils (one of which the artist admitted was "about as beautiful and interesting as the button on barn door") was his brother. At first the artist was furious, but then, one suspects, deeply grateful, as we all should be for Charles Winslow's quiet investment in the career of an American master. For what Walt Whitman did for American poetry, Winslow Homer did for painting.
What Homer did was to create images so powerful they would permanently become part of the American consciousness. Homer's most famous paintings, of course, are of the sea. In fact, to many Americans, Winslow Homer's dark, brooding, stormy seascapes with weary sailors, wave-pounded shores, and shipwrecks epitomize the sea.
But there is another side to Winslow Homer's artistry: that of the watercolorist. Here he is a nineteenth-century Polaroid painter capturing gossamer glimpses of daily life in Winsor & Newton moist tint snapshots. For those already familiar with Homer through his oil paintings, the watercolors--like instant photographs--are full of surprises. "You will see," he predicted to a friend; "in the future I will live by my watercolors."
Currently there is a marvelous opportunity to see exactly what Homer meant, as 100 of the artist's finest watercolors are on display
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