Great Masters

Homer started to work at 19 as an apprentice with a lithographer in Boston before sending his engravings to the Harper's weekly. He then went to New York in 1859 and worked as an illustrator for the Ballou's Pictorial and the Harper's for which he became a correspondent during the Civil War. Instead of depicting battles he however preferred to show life in military camps. As a result of his activity he produced a painting titled “Return of the prisoners from the front line”, which he exhibited in 1866.

Homer had been elected as a member of the National Academy of Design in 1865. Once the war ended he roamed New England where he produced sketches of the countryside. Back in New York during the winter he executed paintings from these sketches.

His favourites themes represented landscapes and farm scenes in which mothers and children played a major role. However, he used at that time quite a sombre palette punctuated by some brilliant tones on the foreground.

His trip to France between 1866 and 1867 had little influence over his style though his illustrations became more joyful and marked by the growing fashion of Japanese prints.

In 1873, Homer embarked on producing watercolours and became interested in representing the world of children and the sea, a fact exhaled in a painting showing young boys on a storm-tossed boat that they are trying to keep going.

Homer then became much more involved in representing nature and left the U.S to spend two years in Tyne mouth, a small English fishermen's village on the North Sea. He then produced austere paintings on the life of the inhabitants of this village exhaling his desire to show man in the face of natural elements.

On his return in America, he settled in Prout's Neck, an isolated Maine fishermen's village and lived rather alone, painting dramatic shipwreck scenes. Sailing on fishing boats he also produced monumental scenes showing calm seas on the one side and rough seas on the other as if he was representing a kind of game counterbalanced by a race against death.

The fight waged by man against natural forces found its momentum in “Gulf Stream” painted in 1899. After producing that forceful work, Homer varied his scenes under the influence of Japanese engravers such as in “The Kiss of the Moon”.