A Garden in Nassau: Winslow Homer

摘要

Born in a time when the history of his young country was still being written, realist painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was perhaps destined to impart the essential American character in his works. Homer's subjects would include sunlit countryside idylls and schoolchildren, Civil War scenes, swelling seas with an occasional marine misadventure, and northern woodlands. Much of America was still the primordial wilderness in which he reveled. Boston, the quintessence of American identity, was Homer's birthplace, and the family moved to Cambridge when he was a young child. As a boy, Homer was attracted to the out-of-doors, recording his rural excursions in drawings. The work of his mother, Henrietta, a watercolorist, served as a template for him with her realistic representations of birds and other subjects of nature. The independent spirit of his father Charles, who embarked on such sundry financial adventures as seeking gold in California, would be part of his son's individuality as person and painter. A lithograph firm was the setting for Homer's early work, but finding this too confining, he began freelancing as an illustrator for the burgeoning magazine trade including Harper's Weekly. In 1859, Homer moved to New York City, illustrating with a comic touch such social happenings as Skating on Ladies' Skating Pond in the Central Park, New York. Despite his success, life as an illustrator lacked the panache of a painter, and toward this end he enrolled in classes in New York's National Academy of Design. In private lessons as well he availed himself of instruction in painting. "Several factors at this time spurred Homer's interest in painting.