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How Winslow Homer Became One of the Medium’s Greatest Masters
Perhaps America’s greatest maritime painter, Winslow Homer became one of the masters of the watercolor medium as well. Mostly self-taught, Homer is known for the visceral force of the waves in his oil paintings, but his watercolors are an antidote to any visual heaviness and weight. As his early paintings reveal, watercolor is where he shined as an artist with a graceful, innovative hand.
Boys in a Dory
Four boys sit in a deep-sided boat. Straw hats shield their faces from the summer sun. The water is calm, save for ripples that break reflections into long strips of color, and a breeze powers two distant schooners and a sailboat.
The sky appears flat and gray, but the water reveals bits of blue — openings in the clouds allowing sunlight through. A boy rows with a single oar, positioned almost directly in the center of the composition. The boy in front of him looks ahead, while the one in back leisurely dangles his bare feet over the boat’s stern.
Winslow Homer’s Boys in a Dory feels spontaneously plucked out of its larger context. The stern of the boat has been cropped from the picture. We can see only one boy’s face, appearing less confident than the other boys’, as he sits within the hull partially hidden by the dory’s sides. He peeks at us from beneath the wide brim of his hat.
Humble Beginnings
Scenes from the daily lives of common folk — especially from the lives of children — were hallmarks of Homer’s first watercolors. His engraved illustrations and oil paintings of Civil War subjects cemented his reputation as an artist by the late 1860s.
He wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with watercolors. His mother was a skilled amateur watercolorist and likely introduced him to the medium at an early age.
Homer had used watercolor washes in drawings for engravings and in preparatory sketches for oil paintings, but it wasn’t until 1873 that he made his first watercolors for exhibition.
At this time, the concept of using watercolor as a serious artistic medium was still in its infancy in America. Established just seven years earlier, the American Society of Painters in Water Colors, later renamed the American Watercolor Society, was slowly raising the medium’s public profile.
In 1873, the Society sponsored an exhibition of nearly 600 American and European watercolors at New York’s National Academy of Design. Homer would have seen this exhibition, and it presumably sparked his interest in using watercolor for finished works.
Inspired by Play
That summer, Homer left for Gloucester, Mass., where he made his first paintings in the watercolor medium. From June through August, he observed and painted children playing around the wharves and boatyards.
In this first watercolor series, children haul baskets of clams, climb on beached dories and row small boats near shore. They pick berries in coastal meadows and hunt for eggs on sandy cliffs. Perhaps most touchingly, they gaze out to sea, waiting for their fishermen fathers.
In Homer’s early paintings, children seem at one with nature. They exist apart from adults as hopeful figures in an idyllic, rural world; but, in the art and literature of post-Civil War America, children were seen as both harbingers of a new era and as symbols of the nation’s lost innocence.
Homer started his Gloucester watercolors with loose graphite underdrawings on top of which he applied washes, along with opaque watercolor and gouache. He used paper with a smooth finish, but didn’t wet it first, as was the common practice among watercolorists who made tightly detailed works.
Applying the paint to a dry surface caused tiny flecks of white to show through, creating a sort of sparkling effect that strengthened the overall sense of light in the works. To capture the brightest points of light, Homer either preserved the white paper or applied opaque white watercolor or gouache; both techniques can be seen in Boys in a Dory.
Homer’s Critics
The year after his summer in Gloucester, Homer presented watercolors at the annual exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors. Critics were torn over these works, hailing them as fresh and original, but also condemning them as raw and unfinished.
Some praised the subject matter as quintessentially American, while others thought it rude and commonplace. A writer for the New York Daily Tribune called the watercolors “memorandum blots and exclamation points.” He goes on: “[the paintings are] so pleasant to look at, we are almost content not to ask Mr. Homer for a finished piece.”
Yet another New York critic wrote that in Homer’s watercolors, “you feel the blow of the salt sea breezes and shade your eyes from the dazzling sun glare.” None of them could have predicted that these depictions of children in a New England fishing town marked the beginning of a lifelong commitment to watercolor that would make Homer one of the greatest innovators of the medium.
In 1875, Homer made his last illustration for Harper’s Weekly, which had been his main source of income. That year, he showed 27 watercolors — including more from Gloucester — at the Society’s annual exhibition.
The sheer number of works publicly declared his embrace of the medium and foreshadowed the statement he would later make to his dealer: “You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”
Celebrate a Lifetime of Watercolor
Watercolor Artist is ringing in a quarter century of watercolor with their 25th-anniversary issue. That includes years upon years of articles that teach learning artists the techniques of watercolor.
It also gives inspiration through thousands of pages. A toast to this beloved publication! Get your anniversary copy now!Article written by Tamera Lenz Muente, associate curator of the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati and a regular contributing writer to Watercolor Artist.
Courtney, the boy who is dangling his feet in the forward part of the boat is at the bow. Do we really know the bow at the back (stern) is really dangling his feet? Looks like another person said the same thing.
Well, A) You’ve got the boat backwards. The boys feet are dangling from the bow. and B) in the years before photography to be sent as a sensitive artist to the front lines of the Civil War, left Homer very much damaged and probably had a lot to do with him painting the idyllic scenes of youth and serenity of water.
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I’m so glad, Gerry!
Courtney thanks for your article. I so much to learn about watercolor. Many thanks.
I’ll bet more than watercolor paints dissolved into puddles upon catching THIS dapper gentleman’s eye! He was quite a handsome dude.
Yup, the boating terms were mixed up here. Made the correction–thank you, Linda!
Courtney, the boy who is dangling his feet in the forward part of the boat is at the bow. Do we really know the bow at the back (stern) is really dangling his feet? Looks like another person said the same thing.
That’s true, Lisa. I should know better. I’ll correct that and thank you for that insight!
Well, A) You’ve got the boat backwards. The boys feet are dangling from the bow. and B) in the years before photography to be sent as a sensitive artist to the front lines of the Civil War, left Homer very much damaged and probably had a lot to do with him painting the idyllic scenes of youth and serenity of water.
So glad you enjoyed it, Tom! And credit goes to Tamera for her great writing. Be well!
Thank you SO much Courtney for the great article on one of my enduring heroes – Outstanding work.
Hope you’re well
Tom Schaller