Watercolors By Winslow Homer

American painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910) created some of the most breathtaking and influential watercolors in the history of the medium. This handsome volume provides a comprehensive look at Homer’s technical and artistic practice as a watercolorist, and at the experiences that shaped his remarkable development. Focusing on 25 rarely seen watercolors from the Art Institute’s collection, along with 75 other related watercolors, gouaches, drawings, and paintings––including many of the artist’s characteristic subjects––the book proposes a new understanding of Homer’s techniques as they evolved over his career. Accessibly written essays consider each of the featured works in detail, examining the relationship between monochrome drawing and watercolor and the artist’s lifelong interest in new optical and color theories. In particular, they show how his sojourn in England—where he encountered leading British marine watercolorists and the dynamic avant-garde art scene—precipitated an abrupt change in technique and subject matter upon his return home. Conservators address the fragility of these watercolors, which are prone to fading due to light exposure, and demonstrate, through pioneering research on Homer’s pigments and computer-assisted imaging, how the works have changed over time. Several of Homer’s greatest watercolors are digitally “restored,” providing an exhilarating glimpse of the original impact of Homer’s groundbreaking color experiments.

Traces the development of Homer as a watercolorist, shows a selection of his landscapes, seascapes, and portraits, and discusses his distinctive style and techniques.

Winslow Homer was the antithesis of the unkempt bohemian artist of the nineteenth century. He not only always maintained the appearance of an English country gentleman, but was also an everyday sort of man, both in his life and his paintings. Yet he is ranked as one of America's greatest painters. The reason is not hard to discover, for Winslow Homer's powerful epic statements spoke for America with a breadth that few other artists have achieved. This is a lively, intimate, and immensely readable portrait of the artist that throws a new light on Homer's life and puts it in fresh perspective. This biography concentrates on Homer's years at Prout’s Neck on Maine’s rugged coast, where he would create his finest paintings, from 1883 until his death in 1920.

This timely study of Winslow Homer highlights his imagery of the Atlantic world and reveals themes of racial, political, and natural conflict across his career. Long celebrated as the quintessential New England regionalist, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) in fact brushed a much wider canvas, traveling throughout the Atlantic world and frequently engaging in his art with issues of race, imperialism, and the environment. This groundbreaking publication focuses, for the first time, on the watercolors and oil paintings Homer made during visits to Bermuda, Cuba, coastal Florida, and the Bahamas—in particular, The Gulf Stream (1899), an iconic painting long considered the most consequential of his career—revealing a lifelong fascination with struggle and conflict. The book also includes Homer’s depictions of rural life and the sea, in which he grapples with the violence of nature, as well as his Civil War and Reconstruction paintings of the 1860s and 1870s, which explore the unresolved effects of the war on the landscape, soldiers, and the formerly enslaved. Recognizing the artist’s keen ability to distill complex issues in his work, Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents upends popular conceptions and convincingly argues that Homer’s work resonates with the challenges of the present day.

"The most popular of all American watercolorists--and the artist who has had the most profound influence on watercolor painting in America--has always been Winslow Homer. This beautiful volume is the first study devoted exclusively to Homer's work in this medium. Published in cooperation with the Brooklyn Museum and The Metropoitan Museum of Art, the book includes virtually the entire Winslow Homer watercolor collection of both museums. The artist began in the English watercolor tradition--subdued color applied in delicate washes with discreet brushwork--but his vigorous, individual talent turned to the vibrant color, free brushwork, and bold, spontaneous washes that have since dominated American watercolor painting. The full range of Homer's work is encompassed in this volume: the subtle, controlled coastal scenes painted during his residence in an English fishing village; the powerful, deep-toned hunting and fishing pictures painted in the Maine woods; and the explosion of tropical color in his late watercolors of the Caribbean, the most famous and influential of all his work. Printed abroad, the color reproductions are unique in their fidelity to the paintings, which were photographed especially for this book under the supervision of the cooperating museums."--from Back cover

The fascinating story of the transformation of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925 The formation of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 by a small, dedicated group of painters transformed the perception of what had long been considered a marginal medium. Artists of all ages, styles, and backgrounds took up watercolor in the 1870s, inspiring younger generations of impressionists and modernists. By the 1920s many would claim it as "the American medium." This engaging and comprehensive book tells the definitive story of the metamorphosis of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925, identifying the artist constituencies and social forces that drove the new popularity of the medium. The major artists of the movement - Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, Charles Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, and many others - are represented with lavish color illustrations. The result is a fresh and beautiful look at watercolor's central place in American art and culture.