| Description |
Fishing Boats Key West...
Winslow Homer
1903
Description of Original: Watercolor
13 15/16 x 21 3/4 in. (35.4 x 55.2 cm)
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Few of Homer's watercolors rival this one for its effects of shimmering sunlight and atmosphere, achieved through the rapid application of wet-on-wet surfaces, exploitation of the white paper reserve, and the judicious sponging of wet pigment, especially in the shadows, reflecting light off the water. This picture is also exceptional for the number and visibility of its pencil marks, not only to indicate some of the boats' rigging (and betraying the pentimento of a sloop in the background that the artist edited out), but also to enliven the rustle of the sailcloth lifted by a phantom breeze. By contrast, Homer, in masterly fashion, merely daubed in the figures freehand, sacrificing nothing of their form and weightthey even seem to speak.
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 September 29, 1910)
An American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art.
Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator. As a youth, Homer was apprenticed to a publisher of popular lithographic prints. In 1857 he launched his career as an illustrator, moving to New York City two years later; there, he attended drawing classes at the prestigious National Academy of Design and briefly studied painting privately. During the Civil War, he went south with the Union troops as an artist-reporter for the magazine Harpers Weekly.
After the war, Homer turned to oil painting. His first works in this medium were wartime scenes that attracted attention for their simple power and lack of sentimentality; their critical success helped gain him election to the National Academy at the age of twenty-nine.
His paintings of subjects ranging from fashionable seasonal resorts to rural childhood as well as African American life in the south broke new ground in their naturalism, directness, and rejection of obvious narrative, and revealed his exceptional command of natural light. In 1873, during a summer spent at the fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, he began to work seriously in watercolor, of which he became a master. |
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