Winslow Homer In America . . .

An exhibition of one hundred twenty-five (125) wood engravings

         This exhibition covers both the early years (1857-1866) as well as the later years following the American Civil War (1867-1887) with one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of wood engravings by Winslow Homer.

         Homer, one of the most celebrated American artists of the nineteenth century, exhibited frequently at fashionable venues including the National Academy of Design, the American Society of Painters, and at prestigious private clubs in New York such as The Union League Club and Century Club, as well as at art galleries and auction houses. Today, his paintings, watercolors, prints and drawings are represented in prestigious museum and private collections of national importance.

         All of Homer's most popular illustrations are included in this exhibition of wood engravings produced over a period of nearly three decades. Themes chosen by the artist relate to family and community life before the American Civil War of 1861-1865 and later, a more somber approach following the War years.

         All of the prints come complete with interpretive labels, drawn mainly from written text by the editors of the publications Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly. The first illustrations produced between 1857-1860 show the gifted talent of a young artist soon to be recognized as one of America's most beloved illustrators and painters. Between the years of 1861-1866 Homer produced a large number of Civil War illustrations for Harper's Weekly while living in New York and 'on assignment' in Virginia as a journalist/illustrator with the troops at the front.

"The life of Winslow Homer, as revealed in his works, is a study worthy of the serious attention of the historian and critic . . . no American painter (is) so thoroughly national in style and character."

--- William Howe Downes, 1911
	The Life and Works of Winslow Homer
	Houghton Mifflin Company

 

                      
  

         Following the Civil War in fall of 1866, Homer took his first real vacation and sailed to Europe to spend nearly a year in France. While there, he visited the great Exposition Universelle where two of his paintings had been accepted for exhibition. Upon his return to New York in November or December of 1867 he immediately began to illustrate scenes for Harper's Weekly, publishing his first images of Parisian life: Dancing at the Mabille, Paris, and Dancing at the Casino, both published in late November 1867. He also produced one of his finest illustrations Homeward-bound, published by Harper's Weekly in December 1867. The following year he illustrated Art Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris which he made from sketches brought back with him.

         Homer's illustrations after 1868 portray a much more serious outlook-showing a changed America with class and economic separations, the toil of factory work (The Morning Bell) and budding of lifestyles among the new leisure class. Homer's themes reveal a man seeking solitude and calm, yet he remains patient and very much at home with the rural activities of New England. His illustrations of 1868-1870 depict the new urban life-style in America's leisure class vacationing in the country and at beachside resorts (On the Bluff at Long Branch, at the Bathing Hour). The works after 1871 focus largely on rural life and the activities of youth (See-Saw - Gloucester, Massachusetts, Waiting for a Bite, Gloucester Harbor, and Snap-the-Whip).