03 Classic Marine Paintings by Winslow Homer - With Footnotes, #54

Winslow Homer, (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)

The Gulf Stream, c.1899

Oil on canvas

28 1/8 x 49 1/8 in. (71.4 x 124.8 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Homer painted this dramatic scene of imminent disaster. A man faces his demise on a dismasted, rudderless fishing boat, sustained by only a few stalks of sugarcane and threatened by sharks and a distant waterspout. He is oblivious to the schooner on the left horizon, which Homer later added to the canvas as a sign of hopeful rescue. Some art historians have read The Gulf Stream as symbolic, connecting it with the period’s heightened racial tensions. The painting has also been interpreted as an expression of Homer’s presumed sense of mortality and vulnerability following the death of his father. More on The Gulf Stream

Winslow Homer, (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)

The Life Line, c. 1884

Oil on canvas

28 3/4 × 44 5/8 in, 73 × 113.3 cm

Philadelphia Museum of Art

One of the great popular and critical successes of the artist’s career, the painting engages age-old themes of peril at sea and the power of nature, while celebrating modern heroism and the thrill of unexpected intimacy between strangers thrown together by disaster.

The Life Line draws on the traditional shipwreck scenario--mountainous waves, wind and spray, a helpless vessel, and a desperate human struggle--with an original, modern perspective. More on this painting

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.

Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as a commercial illustrator.[1] He subsequently took up oil painting and produced major studio works characterized by the weight and density he exploited from the medium. He also worked extensively in watercolor, creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling his working vacations. More on Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)

The Fog Warning / Halibut Fishing, c. 1885

Oil on canvas

76.83 × 123.19 cm (30.2 × 48.5 in)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Homer spent 1881–82 in Cullercoats, England. Both a fishing village and an artists’ colony, Cullercoats provided Homer with profound themes: the arduous lives of fishermen and their families. Shortly after returning to the United States late in 1882, he settled in Prout’s Neck, Maine, similarly both a fishing community and a pleasant summer resort, where he painted the local population and their work. The Fog Warning is one of three paintings he produced at Prout’s Neck in 1885 describing the lives of the North Atlantic fishermen. More on this painting

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