Figure 1.---Winslow Homer painted 'Snap the Whip' (1872). The boys are playing during recess at school. You can see their little red school house in the background, a wonderful depiction of an iconic rural one-room school. The game is also called 'crack the whip'. I am not sure if he painted this wonderful image from memory or actually went out and watched the children playing. The boys join hands (girls were less likely to play), and run around in a circle. Than the boy at the head of the whip stops and the momentum throws the last boy or boys off and leaves them rolling on the grond. The more boys playing, the greater the momentum generated.

Homer painted several different types of images leaving an extrodinarily diverse body of work. His sporting images seem just as fresh as the day they were painted. His seacapes are extrodinarily powerfull. It is his quiet simplistic studies of rural American life in the mid-19th century that he is perhaps best remembered. There are also important Civil War images. His main focus was nature and people dealing with nature--both the forest and the sea. These images are very important historically. Home painted at a time when photohraphy eisted, but as primarily confined to studio photogrphy of people dressed in their best clothes. Thus with Homer we see facinating scenes of life on the frontier and rural areas and the clothes boys wore when not in their best dress-up clothes.

Civil War

Homer in the early 1860s visited with Federal troops in Virginia as a war corespondant with Harper's Weekly (1862-64). He sketeched whatever he saw. These sketeches were used for his first important oil work, "Prisoners from the Front", done after the War (1866). There is anotable air of southern definance among the Confederate prisoners. His Civil War paintings are not battle scenes, but mostly behind the kines and camp scenes. There are in fact virtually no important paintings of Civil War battle scenes. Given the centrality of the Civil War to American history, I am not sure why this was. Another source notes "Croquet" (1862). He also did some Black genre pieces and other souther scenes (1876-80).

Rural Scenes

Homer at the mid point of his career produce works depicting variously rural scenes of Northeast America, often children at play, as well as scenes from increasingly popular resorts, often fashionably dressed women. It is his quiet simplistic studies of rural American life in the mid-19th century that he is perhaps best remembered. Throughout all the tumualt of mid-19th century America, Homer has left us simple, but powerful images of rural life in a still largely agrarian country. The images of children are the most rememerable. There is no better depiction of rural American childhood during this period than Winslow Homer. The most famous is probably "Cracking the whip", but our favorite is "Huntsman and dogs" (figure 1). These were water colors done after the Civil War in the 1870s, but depict more the children of Homer's own childhood before the War. We get the impresion that he was attempting to remember the more idealic America before the maelstrom of Civil War--the central event in American history. Henry James wrote of these paintings, "Barbarously simple. He has chosen the least pictorial features of the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization as if they were every inch as good as Capri or Tangier; and, to reward his audacity, he has incontstably succeeded." They are both wonderful images of childhood as well as important historucal documents in theur on right. And tgey recorded what ohotography could not yet do very well, life outside the ohotigrapher's studio.

Sport Images

Homer was not America's the first "sporting artist". He was, however, the first great artist to address the subject and no one has surpassed him at it. Hunting like America changed over the course of Homer's life. In his youth, hunting had been a way of securing food for the family table. At the end of his life it was becoming a sport for enthusiasts.

Seascapes

Homer also did landscapes. After returning to America from England he focused his work on the sea. In wintered in the Caribbean (Florida, the Bahamas, and Cuba) and then came nort to Maine for the rest of the year. His Caribbean images are of fishermen and afew of children. His Maine images are largely seascapes. These were done near Prout's Neck where he lived during his latter years. The unifying theme in these paintings is man's struggle with the forces of nature.

Created: A6:47 AM 3/1/2012
Last updated: 6:47 AM 3/1/2012