Winslow Homer - Famous Artist

One Watercolor Painting....estimated time to complete was three days plus or minus...

Sold for an estimated 30 million dollars...

The Associated Press reported that, on May 5th 1998, Winslow Homer4 famous artist painting of "Lost on the Grand Banks" sold for 30 million dollars.

The seller, a business man from California, would not discuss the details, only to say he purchased it in the 1940's from his Grandmother and sold it to an American Business man.

So get out those brushes, it works out at $18,750.00 per square inch (a postage stamp size).

It is estimated that Winslow Homer painted close to 600 works of art in his lifetime. Very few are now in the hands of "John Que Public".

A leading realistic painter, he is most famous for his marine subjects and Civil War painting. He is considered one of the foremost painters in the 19th century America, and a pre-eminent figure in American Art.

He possessed an uncanny ability to penetrate the psychology of his subjects and to portray dramatic confrontations between humans and nature. Perhaps no painting has ever conveyed a hunters anxiety better than "Hound Hunter" (with it's flustered boy in the dinghy trying to get a rope on a shot stag's antlers before it sinks).

By the age of twentyone, his free lance illustration career was under way and he contributed to magazines such as Harpers Weekly and Ballou's Pictorial. His early work, mostly engravings, are clean outlines, simple forms and dramatic contrasts of light and dark and lively figure grouping. These qualities remained important thoughout his career.

In the 18704s he painted mostly rural lifescenes of farm life, children playing and young adults courting.

He gained acclaim as a painter in the late 18704s to early 18804s. "Snap of the Whip" was painted in 1872 and exhibited in 1876.

Of his work, Henry J. James wrote this:
"We frankly confess that we detest his subjects...he has chosen the least pictorial range of scenery and civilization, and has resolutely treated them as if they were pictorial...and, to reward his audacity he has incontestably succeeded".

He spent two years in England where he rekindled his boyhood interest in the sea, and painted the local fisher folk. He began to do scenes, harsh in tone, with figures struggling heroically in the landscape. Winslow Homer was working almost exclusively in Watercolor.

Back in the United States he moved to Maine and painted seascapes for which he is now well known.
He never married and, in his most productive years, lived a highly secluded life at Prout's Neck Maine, which was the closest approximation he could find in the United States to that English coast.

Notable among these dramatic struggles with nature images are "Banks Fisherman", "Eight Bells", "Mending the Nets" etc.

Winslow Homer never taught, but his work strongly influenced succeeding generations of American Painters for their direct and energetic interpretation of man's relationship to a sometimes harsh wilderness.

In the summer time, Winslow Homer went into the warmer climates of Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas.

He always experimented freely with a medium of Watercolor, playing and pushing around to see what it might do. So why don't you try, maybe adding salt, dishwashing liquid, or alcohol (not drinking it, painting with it). Grab some different materials and play and splash around with them.

In terms of quality and invention Homer's achievements as a Watercolorist are unparalleled. He once stated "you will see in the future I will live by my Watercolors". In his early years, he painted in oils.

Winslo Homer's Watercolor Paintings exhibit a fresh spontaneous, loose, yet natural style. He seldom traveled without paper, brushes and watercolor based paints.

What can you learn from this master among many other things.....it's luminosity depends on the white of the paper shining through thin washes of pigment. One has to work from light to dark.

It is friendly to accidents (Homer's seas, skies, and Adirondack Hills are full of chance blots and free merges of color), but also disaster prone as well, one slip and the veil of atmosphere turns into a mud puddle or a garish looking swamp.

This is important to you as a Watercolorist......The medium favors broad effects with confident brush strokes. Nothing shouts louder from the roof top "look at me I'm a beginner" as when you fuss, pushing, pulling and overworking the pigment...Put the pigment down and leave it alone, it will paint itself if you give it a chance. This is the hardest thing for beginning painters to get through their heads, but really try hard.

Winslow Homer understood all the needs of Watercolor better than his contemporaries and applied them where they most belonged.

A painting like.....let's say "Key West Hauling Anchor", I believe he painted this in 1903, has sparkling directness hardly attainable in oil. It is so simple looking - blue sea, white boat, a patch or two of red shirt, then picked up again at the boats waterline and in a jaunty brush mark or two of Carmine reflection - that at first one does not recognize the skill that went into it.

Homer's had the ability to convey the milky blue water over a Florida sand bottom in two washes of Cerulean Blue and maybe Cobalt Blue (a guess on my part). I come away with the thought of how quick it was executed, but of how many years of self-critical practice was behind it.

This is a fairly accurate timetable of his life.
Born in Boston, parents encouraged him to become an artist. Became an apprentice to "A Lithographic Firm - J.H. Bufford", at the age of 19. After three years he went freelance. Moving to New York City.

His drawings were accepted by Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, and later by the best magazine of it's time "Harpers".

The Civil War saw him drawing scenes of the front, which featured life in camps rather than the fighting. The Civil War scenes are among the most powerful and authentic records of Union Troop experience produced. "Prisoners from the Front" in the Metropolitan Musium of Art, New York.

Returned to the United States, settled in New York, living there about 13 years and during the 1870's explored a variety of subjectsscenes of rural life as well as themes of childhood. Created two versions of "Snap The Whip", both paintings show his desire of realism, coupled with carefully observed portrayal of light and shadow.

It was during his 1873 stay in Gloucester, Mass., that he first worked in Watercolor, he used this medium for the rest of his career.
The mid 1870's, he produced a number of images of former slaves.

1881 saw him off to England, a small fishing village on the North Sea, staying about 20 months. Painting the local fishing folk and their relationship with the sea. He started to explore the theme of man verses nature.

Returned to the United States in November 1882, stayed in Prout's Neck, Maine, for the rest of his life. Here he created his great series of view of the sea. "Cannon Rock" and "Northeaster" being just two of many paintings.

Winslow Homer also made frequent trips to warmer areas such as Cuba, Nassau, Bermuda and Florida to avoid the harsh Maine winter. His painting there conveyed the brilliant light and vibrant colors of the tropics.

Winslow Homer died at Prout's Neck, Maine, September 29,1910.

Winslow-Homer-Famous-Paintings-in print form below . There are over two hundred prints

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Snap the Whip

Winslow Homer - Famous Artist

Winslow-Homer-Famous-Paintings-in print form below . There are over two hundred prints

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