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THE GULF STREAM 
 
 THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1899. Canvas, 28% inches high, 49% inches wide. 
 
^VINSLOW HOMER 
 
 BY 
 
 Kenyon Cox 
 
 New York 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 
 MCMXIV 
 
Copyrigkt, 1914 
 
 by 
 
 Frederic Fairchild Sherman 
 
 TriL 
 
TO Its FIRST READER 
 
 Philip Littell 
 
 WHOSE criticism AND ADVICE ON MATTERS OF STYLE 
 
 WERE INVALUABLE TO ME 
 
 THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 For the facts and dates of Homer's Kfe I am indebt- 
 ed to ''The Life and Works of Winslow Homer'' by 
 William Ho^ve Downes, Houghton Mifflin Com^! 
 pany, igii. From this book, which I have accepted 
 as the only authority on the subjedl, I have also bor^ 
 rov/ed a fev^ quotations from John W^. Beatty's ''In? 
 trodudlory Note" and from Homer's own letters. 
 
 For the interpretation I have put upon the fad:s, 
 and for the attempt at a critical estimate of Homer's 
 art, I alone am responsible. Upon the vaHdity of this 
 estimate my Kttle book must depend for its excuse for 
 being. 
 
 But while the opinions expressed are my own 
 they must often coincide ^vith those expressed by 
 other ^v^ite^s. If they did not the book might be orig? 
 inal but v/ould almost certainly be erroneous . I think 
 I have said nothing because others have said it, but I 
 have not had the vanity to refrain from saying any? 
 thing because it had been already said, or to attempt 
 novelty at the possible cost of truth. 
 
 Kenyon Cox. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Gulf Stream Frontispiece 
 
 New England Country School . . . Page 
 
 The Berry Pickers 
 
 A Voice from the CKfF 
 
 The We^ Wind 
 
 The Herring Net 
 
 Hound and Hunter 
 
 High Cliff, Coa^ of Maine .... 
 
 A Summer Night 
 
 The Fox Hunt 
 
 The Lookout 
 
 Early Morning After Storm at Sea . 
 
 24 
 24 
 
 32 
 32 
 34 
 38 
 38 
 42 
 
 46 
 
 50 
 54 
 
WINSLOV/ HOMER 
 
WINSLOV/ HOMER 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 I^^^^^^^^S HE painters o£ America v^Ko have 
 ^^^^^^^5i^ gained a certain definiteness and per- 
 (S^^l^jS^^^^ manence of reputation — those whose 
 ^^^^^^^^^ names are as well known to dealers 
 ^^y^^^j^^^ and collectors as are the names of 
 R?^4M^S^^^^^^^y leading foreign makers and \vhose 
 pictures have an e^abHshed and increasing commers^ 
 cial value — belong, almo^ ^thout exception, to the 
 generation which reached its majority shortly before 
 the Civil War. The century and a half of painting in 
 America may be roughly divided into three periods 
 of approximately equal length. The fir^ of our paint;: 
 ers to attain any considerable eminence v/ere purely 
 Enghsh in origin and in training, and the earlier of 
 them ^ve^e, on the v^hole, the be^; so that the first 
 period may be called that of the decKne of the EngHsh 
 school in America. The second period v/as that of the 
 slovv^ evolution of a native school, and this school v/as 
 on the verge of its highest achievement when the third 
 or present period began; the period of a new foreign 
 influence— mainly French — and of the effort to adapt 
 a technic learned in the schools of continental Europe 
 to the expression of American thought and American 
 feehng. We cannot yet tell how many of our paint^^ 
 
 II 
 
ers belonging wholly to this la^ period may achieve 
 a lading fame. Those Avho seem already to have 
 achieved it are of the time o{ transition, and their 
 work marks the culmination of the native school and 
 the beginning of the nev^ influence from abroad. 
 
 Their birth dates fall very near together. The old? 
 eiA of them. Fuller and Hunt, v^ere born in 1822 and 
 1824 respectively, and Inness came in 1825. Then, 
 after a gap of nine years, we have V/hi^ler in 1834, 
 LaFarge in 1835 and, in the one year 1836, Homer 
 Martin, Wy ant, Vedder, and the subjedt of this book, 
 ^/^inslov;^ Homer. The mere li^ of names is enough 
 to show the double nature of the w^ork accomplished 
 by the men of this generation. At the outset ^ve have 
 the sharp contra^ between Hunt, the pupil of Cou? 
 ture and the friend o£ Millet, a teacher and a great 
 influence if a somewhat ineffectual arti^, making 
 himself, from 1855 to his death in 1879, ^^^ apo^le o{ 
 that Barbizon school w^hich was to affedl, in greater 
 or less degree, so many others of the group; and Fuller, 
 working by himself on his Deerfield farm, and emerge 
 ing from obscurity in 1876 as the arti^ic contempo? 
 rary of Hunt's pupils and of the young men whom 
 Hunt's preaching had sent to Paris for their education. 
 And the same contra^ is repeated, in even sharper 
 form, between V/hi^ler and Homer; betv^een the 
 brilhant cosmopolitan who spent but a fev/ years of 
 his infancy and a few more of his youth in his own 
 country, and the recluse of Prout's Neck; between 
 the dainty symphonic, whose art is American only 
 
 12 
 
because it is not quite English and not quite French, 
 and the ^urdy reali^ who has given us the mo^ 
 purely native v^ork, as it is perhaps the mo^ po\ver? 
 ful, yet produced in America. 
 
 Winslovv^ Homer came of pure Nev^ England 
 ^ock, being directly descended from one Captain 
 John Homer w^ho sailed from England in his own 
 ship and settled in Bo^on in the middle of the seven? 
 teenth century. His father, Charles Savage Homer, 
 was a hardv^are merchant in Bo^on, v^here Wins- 
 low ^vas born on February 24th, 1836, and his moth- 
 er, Henrietta Maria Benson, came from Bucksport, 
 Maine, a town named after her maternal grandfather. 
 She is said to have had "•'a pretty talent for painting 
 flov/ers in v/atercolors,'' and her son may have in? 
 herited his arti^ic proclivities from her. There were 
 probably other seafaring men than the fir^ Captain 
 John among the Homer ance^ry, and the arti^'s 
 uncle, James Homer owned a barque and cruised to 
 the V/e^ Indies. We cannot doubt that the love of 
 salt water was even more deeply ingrained in W^in? 
 slow Homer than the love of art, though it was not to 
 show itself until rather late in life. 
 
 In 1842, when Homer ^vas six years old, the family 
 removed to Cambridge, and there his boyhood v^as 
 spent. There v/as ^ill much of the country village 
 about Cambridge, and Homer and his two brothers 
 lived the healthy life of rural New England, fishing, 
 boating, swimming, playing rough games and going 
 to school. An intere^ing memorial o{ this time is 
 
Homer's earlier exiiAing drawing, reproduced in 
 V/illiam Howe Downes's ''Life and Works" of tKe 
 arti^, under the title o{ The Beetle and the Wedge. 
 It represents V/inslow's elder brother Charles and 
 his cousin George Benson holding the younger broth? 
 er, Arthur, spread eagle fashion by the arms and legs 
 and about to swing his weight violently again^ the 
 rear of another innocent young^er squatting on all 
 fours in the grass. 
 
 In the lives of arti^s one expedts, as a matter of 
 course, tales of precocious talent, but it is seldom that 
 such evidence of their veracity can be brought for? 
 v/ard. Here is a boy of eleven dra^ving from life, or 
 from memory of personal observation, a composition 
 of four figures in compHcated foreshortenings; indi? 
 eating their several adlions and expressions vv^ith ad? 
 mirable truth and economy; and, ^vith a fe^v lines 
 and scratches of shade, placing them in their setting 
 of sunht pa^ure and di^ant hillside. Of course the 
 drawing is but a sketch and, equally of course, the 
 ability to make such a sketch does not imply that of 
 carrying it farther. It was long before Homer could 
 put into the form of a definite and completed -work o£ 
 art what is here sugge^ed, but as a sketch, as a rapid 
 notation of the essentials of something seen, it is such 
 as Homer, or any other arti^, might, at any period 
 of his career, have been ^villing to sign. The essential 
 W^inslo^v Homer, the ma^er o£ ^veight and move? 
 ment, is already here in impHcation. If many of the 
 '''heap'' of youthful dra^vings which the arti^ pre? 
 
served for thirty years or more were of anything Kke 
 this quahty it is no wonder that his father encouraged 
 his aspirations, bought him JuKan Kthographs to ^udy 
 and, at nineteen, apprenticed him to one BufFord, a 
 hthographer of Bo^on. 
 
 This was in 1855, and Homer thus became a prac? 
 tising artist without ever having been an art ^udent. 
 He seems to have been employed, at once, upon the 
 better class of ^vo^k turned out by the e^ablishment, 
 and to have designed as w^ell as executed illustrated ' 
 title-pages for sheet music and the like. During his 
 apprenticeship he managed to pick up from a French 
 wood engraver named Damereau some hints as to 
 methods of drawing on the block, and when his tw^o 
 years were up — on his twentyfir^ birthday — he took 
 a ^udio of his own and set up as an: independent illus^ 
 trator. He v/orked at fir^ for ''Bailouts Pidtoriar' 
 and later for ''Harper's Weekly," and his connection 
 with the latter periodical endured until 1875, '^^^il^ ^^ 
 continued to do occasional book illu^ration for sever? 
 al years longer. 
 
 There are many worse preparations for the career 
 of a painter than the ^vo^k of a hack illu^rator. The 
 illu^rator mu^ be ready to dra^v anything and, if he 
 takes his v/ork seriously and does his tasks as v/ell as 
 he can, he is learning something every day. And he 
 mu^ concentrate his mind on his result, learn to tell 
 his i^ory and to make his intention clear. No one is 
 so httle tempted to the modern fallacy that the only 
 business of a painter is to learn to paint, that the subjedt 
 
 15 
 
is of no importance, and that, if only one is a trained 
 speaker, it matters little ^vhetKer or not one has any? 
 thing to say. The illu^rator mu^ al^vays say some? 
 thing, ^vhether he says it v^ell or ill. He mu^ make 
 his pidture, always, and a fi?esh pidture each time, and 
 his success will depend on the intere^ of the public in 
 \vhat he does,, not on the approval by his fellows of 
 the way in w^hich he does it. Homer's ^vo^k in black 
 and ^vhite was, for the moirt part, independent of any 
 ^vritten text and he seems, generally, to have chosen 
 his subjedls for himself. They are very varied and, 
 in the course of his ^vo^k as an illu^rator, he experi? 
 mented with almoirt every kind of subjedl he after? 
 wards made his ov/n as ^vell as with many that he 
 never rendered in color. He did not attempt the ideal 
 or the romantic, but anything that he could see he 
 ^vas ready to drav/, deaHng impartially with town 
 and v^ith country, and trying his hand at ^vell dressed 
 ladies and gentlemen as at barefoot boys and sunbon? 
 neted girls. His first Adirondack lAudies, his fir^ 
 sea?shore pieces, his fir^ deep?sea scenes, appeared in 
 black and white. 
 
 Of the merit of Homer's drav/ings for illu^ration 
 it is difficult to judge. American v/ood engraving 
 V7as not, in those days, the fine art that it afterv^ards 
 became, and. the blocks on ^vhich he v/orked \vere 
 cut v/ith a mechanical and somev^hat dismal monot? 
 ony. It is only in the in^ances v^here a prelimin? 
 ary \vater color sketch exi^s that we can judge how 
 much of beauty and of character was sacrificed in re? 
 
 i6 
 
produdtion. If Kis original draw^ings dired; upon tke 
 vv^ood have lo^ as much in the cutting they mu^ have 
 been far better than we shall ever knovs/. But v/hat? 
 ever their arti^ic value, or lack of it, they were of 
 incalculable importance as a training of the observer 
 and the recorder of observations that Homer was. 
 
 In 1859 Homer came to New York, and this city 
 remained his home, when he was at home, for tsventy- 
 five years. Here he attended for a time the night class 
 of the National Academy of Design, and had lessons, 
 once a v^eek, on Saturdays, for a month, from a French 
 arti^ named Rondel. They v^ere the ordy painting 
 lessons he ever had, and in the catalogue of the Paris 
 Exposition of igoo he duly appears as '"eleve de Fred- 
 erick RondeV' \ for in French catalogues one mu^ be a 
 pupil of some one. He appears for the fir^ time as an 
 exhibitor at the Academy exhibition of i860, w^ith a 
 drawling of Skating in Central Park; probably a ^udy 
 for, or a repKca of, one of his illu^rations for ''Harp- 
 er's Weekly.'' 
 
 In 1 86 1 Homer seems to have gone to Washing? 
 ton to make drav^ings of Lincoln's inauguration, and 
 in the next year he vv^as certainly special arti^ for 
 ''Harper's Weekly" with McClellan's army in the 
 Peninsula. He was probably not more than three 
 months at the front, but his experience during that 
 time mu^ have supplied him w4th many more sketch? 
 es and ^udies than are represented in the d^a^vings he 
 sent home, and from these ^udies he took the subjects 
 of his fir^ pictures. In November of 1862, ''Harper's 
 
Weekly'' published his Sharpshooter on Picket Duty 
 as ''from a painting by W. Homer, Esq./' and this, 
 the firi^ of his ^vo^ks in oil, ^vas followed by Rations, 
 Home, S^veet Home, and The La^ Goose at York? 
 to^vn. The two latter were exhibited in the Nation^; 
 al Academy exhibition of 1863, and in 1864 Homer 
 sent to the Academy In Front of the Guard House 
 and The Briarv^ood Pipe and was promptly eledted 
 an Associate. The next year he exhibited The Bright 
 Side and two other pidtures and v/as made a full Aca^^ 
 demician, though this eledtion is generally attributed 
 to the reputation o£ Prisoners from the Front, then 
 under way but not ready for exhibition. It appeared 
 at the Academy in 1866, ^vhen the arti^ was thirty 
 years old, and is one of a series of important pidtures 
 that mark off the decades of his life in a curious man? 
 ner. This one may be said to announce the definite 
 conclusion of his 'prentice years. They had been very 
 short, and he \vas an Academician before any of his 
 group except Vedder, who ^vas eledted in the same 
 year, the author of an almo^ sensationally success:^ 
 fill pidture, and an artiA whose ^vork sold readily 
 at such prices as were then current, all vs^ithin four 
 years from the beginning of his fir^ painting. 
 
 There is something of a my^ery about the present 
 ownership of Prisoners from the Front and it does not 
 appear to have been shown in public since the sale of 
 the John Taylor Johnson coUedtion in 1876. It made 
 a deep impression, at the time, not less upon the arti^s 
 than upon the critics and the public. In 1876 Prof. 
 
John F. Weir called it ''a unique \vork in American 
 art'' and thought it better than anything Homer had 
 done in the intervening years ; and LaFarge, ju^ be^ 
 fore his death, wrote of it as ''a marvelous painting, 
 marvelous in every way, but especially in the grasp 
 of the moment." V/as it not, above all, to this ''grasp 
 of the moment" that it owed its success? In technical 
 merit it can hardly be greatly superior to The Bright 
 Side, w^hich is as much as to say that it must be ^ill 
 decidedly primitive. This latter picture represents a 
 group of negro team^ers basking in the sun outside 
 their tent. A certain piquancy is given to the com? 
 position by the placing of the head looking out from 
 the tent^flaps above the loungers, but that is the only 
 touch of purely arti^ic intere^. The drawing is suffi? 
 cient, no more; the color brov/n and heavy; the hand? 
 ling entirely v/ithout charm. The pid:ure is intere^? 
 ing from its evident truth of observation in character 
 and attitude — that is, for its purely illu^rative quaU? 
 ty — but as painting it hardly exi^s. Given this same 
 illu^rative value, and a subjedl so intere^ing to the 
 public of 1866 as that of the Prisoners from the Front, 
 and \ve may account for the success of that picture 
 v/ithout imagining it to have been much better paint? 
 ed than the other v/orks of this time. They are works 
 from v/hich Homer's future could scarce have been 
 predicted, and they w^ould be already forgotten had 
 not that future brought forth things of very different 
 and va^ly greater quality. 
 
 19 
 
PART rwo 
 
 IN spite of his precocious boyhood and his rapid 
 success as a young man. Homer's talent as an artiirt 
 ripened slowly. An Academician before he was thir? 
 ty, he was forty when he produced the fir^ of his pic^s 
 tures which has something of greatness in it, the fir^ 
 which is admirable in itself rather than intere^ing as 
 marking a ^age of progress; he was nearly fifty before 
 he began the series of pidtures dealing with the life o£ 
 sailors and fishermen which sho^ved him definitely 
 as a great figure painter and an interpreter of humans: 
 ity; and he was sixty vs^hen he painted one of the la^ 
 and greater of them. Finally, he was fiftyfour vv^hen 
 he painted the fir^ of those pidtures of surf and shore, 
 marines ^vithout figures or v^ith figures of minor im^s 
 portance, by ^vhich he is be^ known to the great pub:= 
 lie; and ten or twelve years older v/hen some of the 
 be^ of them were produced. If he had died at forty 
 he would not now^ be considered a painter of any im^ 
 portance. If he had died at fifty he would be remem^ 
 bered as an arti^ of great promise and as the author 
 of a few pidtures in vv^hich promise had become per? 
 formance. It is because he lived to be seventy four that 
 his career is the great and rounded whole v/e know. 
 
 There w^ere reasons internal as well as external for 
 this slo^vness of development, but the moiA important 
 reasons were internal. It v^as, in a sense, the very 
 lAurdiness and independence of Homer's charadter, 
 and the clearness of his vision of v/hat he wanted to 
 
 20 
 
do, that kept him so long learning to do it. We have 
 seen hov^ Kttle \vas the formal training he had, with 
 what a slender equipment of previous ^udy he set out 
 to express himself in paint, and how his earHe^ v/orks 
 are saved from utter insignificance only by his native 
 gift of observation, the manner of expression being 
 w^orse than negligible. Now^ there v/ere, even in the 
 sixties, and even for a man w^ith his Kving to earn by 
 illu^ration or other hack work, opportunities for a 
 fuller education in the technic of his profession than 
 Homer chose to give himself; and if he had as little 
 such education as a Che^er Harding, it was not, as in 
 Harding's case, because there ^vas none to be had, but 
 because he would not have it. He was never docile 
 enough to learn from others. While he w^as ^ill a 
 hthographer's apprentice in Boston he had said to 
 FoxcroftCole, ''if a man wants to be an arti^ he mu^ 
 never look at pidlures,'' and in that faith he lived and 
 died. At no time of his career did he show much in? 
 tere^ in the v^ork of other men or betray any need of 
 that give and take of discussion which forms what is 
 known as an ''arti^ic atmosphere,'' or of that criti? 
 cism from those ^vho know v^ithout v/hich even a 
 Donatello was afraid of deterioration. He ^ood alone 
 and v/as sufficient to himself. When, after his fir^ 
 successes, he felt that he had earned a trip abroad, he 
 ^vent to Paris, in 1867, and spent ten months in that 
 capital, but he did none of the things there that almo^ 
 any other young arti^ v/ould have done. He did not 
 go into the schools, he did not copy old or modern 
 
 21 
 
makers, he did not settle in any of the arti^ic colo:? 
 nies or consort much ^vith other artists; and if he 
 looked at the pidlures in the great galleries his subset: 
 quent \vork sho^vs no evidence of it. He came back 
 as he went, and two or three illuiArations of Parisian 
 dance halls or of copyi^s at v/ork in the Louvre and 
 the title Picardie in the Academy catalogue of 1868 
 are the only things to remind us that he v/as ever in 
 France. 
 
 The choice may have been right for Homer, but 
 it ^vas a choice that carried its penalties with it. A 
 painter has, indeed, other things to do than merely to 
 learn to paint, but he has, after all, to learn to paint; 
 and to insi^ on discovering the yv^iy for one's self is 
 often to take the longed road to one's de^ination. 
 Homer did, in time, learn to paint sufficiently for his 
 purpose, and though his work in oils always lacked 
 the higher technical distinction it attained to a free:^ 
 dom and pov/er of expression v/hich fitted it admirably 
 to his needs. But this evolution of an adequate method 
 took a very long time, and for the next dozen years 
 the intere^ in his pidlures is rather in his experimental 
 searching for the subjedts that suited him than in any 
 greatly increased ma^ery in his rendering of the sub^^ 
 jedls he seledled. 
 
 Had Homer been adtuated mainly by commercial 
 considerations he might ^vell have re^ed where he 
 was, and have gone on, for some years at lea^, paints 
 ing military subjedls. What he did \vas the contrary 
 of this, and Prisoners from the Front appears to have 
 
 22 
 
been the la^ military picture he ever painted. To the 
 same Academy exhibition in which it appeared he 
 sent another canvas called The Brush Harrov/. I 
 knov/ nothing of it except the title, but that title leads 
 one to suppose that it v^as his first attempt at the treat- 
 ment of American farm life. If any one could have 
 painted that Hfe, and have got out of it something 
 equivalent to what Millet got out of the life of the 
 French peasant, Homer v^as surely the man. The fad: 
 that he failed, as others have done, and has left noth^ 
 ing important in that field, is one more proof that the 
 American farmer is unpaintable. His co^ume and his 
 tools are too sophisticated to sugge^ the real simplicity 
 and dignity of his occupation. 
 
 For the next few years Homer's subjedls are very 
 varied. He seems to be preluding in several directions, 
 and v/e have, among others, such prophetic titles as 
 The Manche^er Coa^, 1869, and Sail-boat, 1870. In 
 1872 he reverted to the memories of his boyhood and 
 painted The Country School and Snap the Whip. 
 This la^ is one of the mo^ successful of his early 
 pictures and has been firequently re-exhibited. It is 
 painted in a dry and rather timid manner, with, hot, 
 brown undertones, and possesses very Httle beauty; 
 but it makes such an impression of truth that it is quite 
 unforgettable. The drawing, though awkward in de^ 
 tails, is ahve; the boys are real boys and are really 
 playing v^ith all their might; the landscape, v/ith its 
 Httle red school-house, is thoroughly characterized; 
 and even the sunKght, though false in color, is so v/ell 
 
 ^3 
 
observed as to degrees o£ light and dark, and caiAs 
 shado^vs so true in shape, as to be real, hard, gHttering 
 sunhght. It is difficult to imagine anyone's loving the 
 pidlure very much, but no one can help respecting it. 
 The Country School is a very different production, 
 a sketch rather than a finished pidture — the small fig^ 
 ures so slightly painted as to be transparent in places, 
 allo\ving the benches to be seen through them — but 
 a sketch possessing a breadth of tone and a charm of 
 handhng exceptional in Homer's vv^ork. But for the 
 subject, it might almo^ pass for an early Whistler. 
 Already, in such a v/ork as Snap the W^hip, 
 Homer is beginning to make us feel the glory of out 
 of doors, but to express it fully he needed a larger and 
 rougher sort of life to paint, as well as a more mature 
 manner of painting it. In 1873 ^^ spent a summer on 
 Ten Pound Island in Glouce^er Harbor, the imme^j 
 diate result of which v/as some charming v^atercolors 
 of coai^ scenes, including Mrs. Lawson Valentine's 
 delightful Berry Pickers, and in 1874 he went, for the 
 fir^ time, to the Adirondacks. Here, in the life of 
 hunters and guides, was matter to his mind, and his 
 irtyle rose w^ith it. In 1876, v^hen he was forty years 
 old, he painted the fir^ of what may be called his 
 maimer pieces. The Tv^o Guides. The bro^vn under^ 
 painting is ^ill present, but the handKng is larger and 
 freer, with, a directness and suppleness comparable 
 to that of his later Avork. On a mountain ridge overs 
 grov/n ^vith scrubby bushes ^and the guides, axes in 
 hand, one, an old man ^vith long gray beard, points 
 
 24 
 
NEW ENGLAND COUNTRY SCHOOL 
 COLLECTION OF MR. FREDERIC FAIRCHILD SHERMAN 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1872. Canvas, nVs inches high, 17% inches wide. 
 
 THE BERRY PICKERS 
 
 (Water-Color) 
 
 THE PULSIFER COLLECTION 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, July 1873. Paper, QVs inches high, 13V^ inches wide. 
 
JOOHD2 YHTMUOD QVIAJOHH WSK 
 
 KyvM>iacH8 ajiHD^iA^ Di^aaaji^ hm ^o mo: 
 
 IT 
 
ing out some landmark to his taller and younger com:; 
 rade. Beyond the foreground ridge is a valley filled 
 with fleecy cloud that rises in ragged shapes again^ 
 the higher and more di^ant peak, and floats a^vay to 
 dissipate itself in the bright sunshine of a summer 
 morning. The picture is full of the joy of high places 
 and the splendor of fine v^eather. Nothing else that 
 I knov^ of in pictorial art so perfectly expresses the 
 spirit of Shakespeare's ^vonderflil image: — 
 
 —''And jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the mi^ty mountain tops/' 
 More than once, in later years, Homer reverted to 
 the camp life of the Adirondacks for his subjects but, 
 to my mind, this fir^ of the Adirondack series re^^ 
 mains the fine^ of all. Indeed it v^as, for long, un? 
 matched in its po^ver by anything else he did. The 
 year that it v^as painted, harking back to The Bright 
 Side of eleven years earlier, he ^vent to Petersburg, 
 Virginia, to ^udy the negroes again, and in that and 
 the next year or two he painted The Visit from the 
 Old Mistress, The Carnival, and several other sub^ 
 jects of Negro Ufe; sober and excellent genre pictures, 
 but certainly w^ithout the ''Homeric'' lift of his great 
 successes. Then he is at Houghton Farm, trying 
 again, and again failing, to find inspiration in the life 
 of the American farmer; or at Glouce^er and Annis- 
 quam, doing Schooners at Anchor and the like, but 
 not yet feeling, or not rendering, the grandeur of the 
 sea. His illu^rations for "Harper's" ceased to appear 
 a year before The T^vo Guides \vas painted; his occa^: 
 
 ^5 
 
sional book illu^rations disappear after 1880; and in 
 1 88 1 began that experience which v/as, in so many 
 ways, decisive for him, his two years' ^ay among the 
 fisherfolkofTynemouth,nearNewca^le,in England. 
 
 For even this mo^ native of American arti^s was 
 deeply influenced by a foreign sojourn, only it was a 
 new view of nature that afFedted him, not a new in? 
 spiration from art. In this English fishing town his 
 own peculiar range of subjedts ^vas revealed to him; 
 here he fir^ felt to the full the romance of the sea and 
 of those who go down to the sea in ships. Here he 
 firi^ felt the maje^y of the breakers, the irresi^ible 
 might of the surf. Here he painted his first scenes of 
 wreck and acquired that sense, which never lefi: him, 
 of the perils of the deep. And in Tynemouth, also, 
 he found, or perfedled, his means of expression. The 
 work he did during his ^ay there, and after his re? 
 turn, is di^inguished firom that which w^ent before 
 not merely by a greater dramatic intensity and a 
 broader and more profound feeling, but by ^r iking 
 alterations of style. 
 
 The fir^ and moirt important of the effedls of the 
 Tynemouth visit upon Homer's ^yle is the awak? 
 ening in him of a sense of human beauty and, par? 
 ticularly, of the beauty of v^omanhood. Hitherto he 
 had made some unconvincing attempts at beflounced 
 ladies in bugles and chignons, and had dra^wn, with 
 much more feeling and veracity, certain slim Yankee 
 girls in limp skirts and gingham sunbonnets. Now 
 he saw for the first time, in these robu^ English fish? 
 
 26 
 
wives, a type of figure matching in its nobility and 
 simplicity the elemental forces of nature; a type 
 which lent itself admirably to his love of weight and 
 sohdity. Not from art, but from life, he learned the 
 meaning of classic breadth and serenity, and his idea 
 of figure drawing was transformed and enlarged. 
 The memory of this type remains ever v/ith him, 
 and henceforth his w^omen be they nearly pretty or 
 frankly ugly, are, Hke his men, grandly and gener? 
 ously built. 
 
 It may v/ell be that the large, slow ge^ure of these 
 figures had some influence in the sudden development 
 in Homer of a sense of the rhythm of line. Certainly 
 it is in his great Tynemouth watercolors that the pos= 
 session of this sense is decisively announced. He had 
 alw^ays a ^rong feeKng for spacing; from the begin? 
 ning he put his subjedt rightly upon his paper or his 
 canvas, and balanced his full and empty spaces with 
 fehcity. It is in such compositions as Inside the Bar 
 and A Voice fi:om the CUffs that he adds to his pat- 
 tern the element of flov/ing, leading and redupKcat? 
 ing lines, and becomes, what he remains, a ma^er 
 designer. A Voice from the Cliffs is as complete in 
 its unified grouping of three figures as anything you 
 shall find in art, and Homer himself could not improve 
 upon it. Some four years later he took it up again, on 
 a larger scale and in oils, when it became Hark! the 
 Lark; but it lo^ as much in beauty by the absence of 
 the great bounding4ine of the cUff and, especially, by 
 the omission of the boat and sail, which carries on so 
 
 ^7 
 
happily the Une of the out^retched arms, as it gained 
 in height and dignity by the addition of the lov^er part 
 of the figures. Both are admirable compositions, but 
 the earlier seems to me the finer of the two. 
 
 Another important element of Homer's art that 
 seems to have come firom his Indies on the shore of 
 the North Sea is his feeling for the beauty of atmos? 
 phere, the enshrouding my^ery of air that is charged 
 ^vith moi^ure, the poetry o£{og and mi^. His earHer 
 works v/ere painted in the clear, sharp air of his native 
 Nev7 England and, for the mo^ part, in full sunlight, 
 and everything ^ands out in them hard edged and im^ 
 placably revealed. In The T^vo Guides this gHttering 
 mountain clearness is exhilarating, but oftener it is 
 rather digressing in its expHcitness. At Tynemouth 
 he learned to envelop his figures in fleecy softness and 
 to place his landscape in the sky rather than in firont 
 of it. Something o( the old hardness returns in one 
 or t^vo of his later pidtures, usually v^here it intensi^^ 
 fies the sentiment of the subjedt, and in his sub^trop^ 
 ical scenes he combines his old love o£ sunKght -with 
 that fullness of color v/hich alone makes intensity of 
 light bearable and beautifiil; but his ne^v sense of the 
 enveloping atmosphere is a permanent acquisition, 
 without which the creation o{ his great sea dramas 
 would hardly have been possible. 
 
 These ne^v and important elements o£ Homer's 
 art, brought ^vith them, of necessity, a new sy^em 
 of coloring and a ne^v handling of material. The 
 work he did during the two years he spent in Tyne^^ 
 
 28 
 
moutli was entirely in watercolor, so tkat the changes 
 brought about in his method of painting in oil mu^ be 
 looked for in the pictures painted immediately after 
 his return to America. In these pictures the brown 
 under^^painting has entirely disappeared, the general 
 tone becoming cool and silvery, while the paint is laid 
 on direcftly with a free and full brush. It is hence:= 
 forth modern painting that Homer practises, marked 
 by nothing of the old timidity and thinness and show^^ 
 ing, on the other hand, no search for technical niceties 
 of any kind. He attacks his subjedl with forthright 
 simphcity and sincerity, caring only for the truth of 
 his representation and scarcely at all for the manner 
 of it, and in this his art is charadteri^ic of his time — 
 of that latter end of the nineteenth century in which 
 all the be^ of it was produced. 
 
 Thus, in matter and in manner. Homer has defi^: 
 nitely found himself. After this time, though not all 
 his ^vo^k is o£ equal value, it is all mature work ; all 
 marked with the charadleri^ics that his name calls 
 up for us; all sealed with his seal. And though he is 
 never to cease from experimenting, from going afield 
 after nev^ subjedls and making new and surprising 
 discoveries, yet he shoves us only new aspedts of one 
 clear and decided personaKty. We have no longer 
 to deal v^ith foreshadowing s of the Winslow Homer 
 that is to be, but with varying manife^ations of the 
 V/inslow Homer that is. 
 
 29 
 
PART Three 
 
 As IF to signalize his arrival at the full maturity of 
 J'X^ his talent, Homer left Nev/ York in i884, tak=: 
 ing with him t^vo unfinished canvases. The Life Line 
 and Undertow, and settled himself at Prout's Neck, 
 w^here he ^vas farther removed than ever before fi:om 
 all extraneous arti^ic influences. There he made his 
 home for the rest of his life, and there he painted all 
 those pidtures of his later years v/hich have assured 
 his fame. 
 
 Prout's Neck is a rocky promontory on the east 
 side o£ Saco Bay in the tow^n of Scarboro, Maine. 
 V/hat it is like no admirer of Homer's pidlures needs 
 to be told but, during much of his life there, it was 
 not so lonely a place as one would be tempted to im^ 
 agine. Arthur B. Homer had discovered the point 
 in 1875 and regularly spent his summers there from 
 that year. He was joined, later, by his father and 
 his brother Charles, and Winslow had visited them 
 there more than once before he decided to build a cot^ 
 tage and studio and make it his permanent residence. 
 We are told that the Homers ''bought up mo^ of the 
 land on the v^ater front, and set out to develop the 
 place systematically as a summer resort,'' v^ith the 
 result that, before the arti^'s death, there were sixty^ 
 seven houses on the neck and seven hotels. In such 
 a place he could not lead quite the hermit4ike life 
 vv^hich legend has given him, but he v/as pretty effect 
 tually secluded firom professional companionship, and 
 
 30 
 
as he gre\v older fewer people o{ any sort were ad- 
 mitted to his ^udio. He lived alone, cooking for him? 
 self and, it is said, cooking extremely \vell, and em? 
 ploying only a man vv^ho came in each morning to ' 'do 
 the chores." He was fond of a certain amount of man? 
 ual labor, building ^one walls, dog houses and the like, 
 and cultivating an old fashioned flovv^er and vegetable 
 garden. At one time he even attempted to grow and 
 cure his own tobacco and to roll his ov/n cigars. 
 
 There is nothing surprising in the fadt that Homer, 
 v^ho ^vas nov^ becoming more and more definitely a 
 painter of the sea, should have chosen for his summer 
 home a place where he could live continually with 
 his chosen subjed:; but almost any other man would 
 have retained a ^udio in the city for those months 
 when even he found the climate of Prout's Neck too 
 rigorous and its soKtude too absolute. Almo^ any 
 other man \vould have taken some pains to maintain 
 his relationship with his brother arti^s and to keep 
 in touch v/ith v^hat they v/ere doing. It is charac? 
 teristic of Homer that w^hen he retired to his sea^shore 
 ^udio he shut the door after him. About 1888 he 
 ceased to contribute voluntarily to the exhibitions or 
 even to pay much attention to invitations to exhibit, 
 and mo^ of his pidlures shown after that date were 
 borrowed from ov/ners or dealers. When Prout's 
 Neck became uninhabitable he ^vent south to Florida 
 or the Bahamas and filled his portfolios with the won? 
 derful watercolor sketches we know, and by March 
 he was back again in Maine. Except for rare appear? 
 
 31 
 
ances, one or two of tkem for tKe purpose of serving 
 on tke juries of important exhibitions, his fellows 
 knev/ him no more; and many of his younger con? 
 temporaries, myself among the number, never so 
 much as saw the man. 
 
 Homer's fir^ voyage to Nassau and Cuba took 
 place in the winter of 1885^6, though the two import? 
 ant oil paintings of V/e^ Indian subjedls. The Gulf 
 Stream and Search Light — Santiago, were not fin? 
 ished until 1899. During these later years, also, his 
 trips to the Adirondacks were repeated, and his search 
 for ^udy combined with recreation took him into 
 Canada, but the greater number of his pid-nres, exclu? 
 sive, of course, of his deep?sea subjects, were painted 
 not only in but o( Prout's Neck, and the place is in? 
 deUbly associated ^th his name. 
 
 The two pictures Homer took w^ith him to Prout's 
 Neck had been conceived in 1883 at Atlantic City, 
 where he had gone especially to ^udy the subjedl of 
 The Life Line and where he ^vitnessed the rescue 
 from drov/ning ^vhich suggei^ed Undertow, and they 
 had been begun in his Ne^v York i^udio. The fir^ 
 was rapidly completed and exhibited in 1884, and the 
 second ^vas finished two years later. The series of 
 works belonging entirely to his Prout's Neck period 
 begins with the two great pidlures o£ 1885 dealing 
 ^vith the lives of the Banks fishermen. The Fog 
 V/arning and The Herring Net. In 1886 Homer ^vas 
 fifty, and again the decade is marked off by a pidture 
 of especial importance. This time it is the noblei^ and 
 
 3^ 
 
A VOICE FROM THE CLIFFS 
 
 (Water-Color) 
 
 COLLECTION OF DR. ALEXANDER C. HUMPHREYS 
 
 Signed and dated; Winslow Homer, 1883. Paper, 203/^ inches high, 29^4 inches wide. 
 
 THE WEST V/IND 
 
 COLLECTION OF MR. SAMUEL UNTERMYER 
 
 Signed and dated; Winslow Homer. 1891. Canvas, 30y2 inches high, 441/4 inches wide. 
 
r.i^li.,' :iHT MC 
 
 ••^t)'^^ {\COS .-iaqi .7 thstsb bns fa^ngfa 
 
tKe quieted of all his figure pidtures. Eight Bells, and 
 ju^ ten years later he rose again to something like the 
 same level of serene power in The Lookout — All's 
 Well. The la^ of his pictures of seafaring life was 
 the extraordinary Kissing the Moon of 1904. The 
 series of great pictures of rock and surf, in which the 
 sea is itself the principal subjedt, the human figure be^ 
 ing altogether absent or reduced to a minor role — the 
 series which marks Homer as the greater of marine 
 painters —seems to have begun in 1890 with Sunlight 
 on the Coa^ and the fir^ Coa^ in Winter (there is 
 another pidlure, of a year or two later, with the same 
 title) and thereafter one or more such pidlures can be 
 placed in each year until 1897. After that date there 
 are fewer of them, though the Early Morning after 
 Storm at Sea is of 1902 and the la^ of them is the la^ 
 pidture he finished, the Driftwood of 1909, To name 
 but the mo^ important, the Luxembourg pidlure, A 
 Summer Night, is of 1890; The We^ \Vind is of 
 1891; High Cliff — Coa^ of Maine is of 1894; Cannon 
 Rock and Northea^er are of 1895; and Maine Coa^ 
 and Watching the Breakers of 1896. 
 
 There are those who objed: to the more dramatic 
 of Homer's subjedt pictures, such as The Life Line 
 and Undertov/ or the much later Gulf Stream for 
 their ''^ory^telling'' quaKty. If, indeed, it is an arti^ic 
 sin to be intere^ed in life and death as w^ell as in paints 
 ing — to care for the significance of things as well as for 
 their shapes and colors — then Homer muA bear the 
 odium of this sin with Michelangelo and Rembrandt 
 
 33 
 
and almo^ all the greater artiiAs of tKe world. But, 
 he it noted, it is never a trivial anecdote that Homer 
 tells, but a ^ory of big and simple issues and of power:? 
 ful human appeal; and it is never a special tale, need^^ 
 ing knov/ledge of something outside the canvas for its 
 comprehension. He attempts no complicated narra? 
 tion but seizes upon a single moment, in which all 
 that it is necessary to kno^v of what has gone before 
 or ^vhat is to come after is implicit, and he depidts 
 that moment with the utmo^ diredlness and po^ver, 
 disencumbering it of all side issues and of all unimpor? 
 tant accessories. It is not whether an arti^ tells Tories 
 that is important, but v/hat Tories he tells and ho\v he 
 tells them, and I know no pictures that could better 
 serve than these of Homer's as examples of the kind 
 of Tories that are suited to pidlorial telling and of the 
 manner in which such Tories should be told. 
 
 It is only in the fir^ of them that the illu^rative 
 intere^ at all overbears that which is more purely 
 pidtorial, and this is not because of too much intere^ 
 in the ^ory, but because the pidture, as such, is not so 
 perfedl as those of a little later date. The concentra^? 
 tion of attention on the fainting figure of the woman, 
 the energy in the attitude of the sailor ^vho carries 
 her, the sense of rapid motion conveyed by the diag^ 
 onal hne of the rope and the blowing scarf and go^svn 
 — these are not faults but virtues, and virtues of a high 
 order. One could perhaps ^vish that the go^vn ^vere 
 not torn quite Avhere it is, but this is a fault of illu^ra^s 
 tion, not a fault of painting. It is because neither the 
 
 34 
 
THE HERRING NET 
 
 COLLECTION OF MR. CHARLES \V. GOULD 
 
 Canvas, 29V^ inches high, 47^2 inches wide. (Sight measurements.) 
 

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 Rp^^^V/f ^^^^H^hJI 
 
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dravv^ing nor the color are quite at Homer's highe^ 
 level that the pidlure mu^ take a second rank. 
 
 Underto^v is quite as vivid and as gripping in the 
 telling of its ^ory as The Life Line, but its technical 
 merits are far greater. The composition of the Unked 
 figures makes an admirable pattern, and the figure 
 drawing is Homer's highe^ achievement in that Kne. 
 Nowhere is his feeKng for robu^ beauty so evident as 
 in the almo^ classic proportions of the women clasped 
 in each other's arms, and the only face clearly visible 
 is like the face of the Greek Hypnos. It ^vould be a 
 great picture if it had no ^ory at all — it is the greater 
 because it has a thrilling ^ory grandly told. 
 
 In this pidture the arti^'s old deKght in hard and 
 brilliant sunlight is put to use in intensifying, by con- 
 tra^, the tragic character of the subjed:, and it is so 
 used again in the deeper tragedy of The Gulf Stream; 
 but even this mo^ dramatic of Homer's pictures, su^ 
 perbly illu^rative as it is, is by no means an iUu^ra;: 
 tion only. The figure of the Carving negro on the dis- 
 mantled boat is small and carelessly drav^n, but the 
 play of line through the ^vhole composition is magni- 
 ficent, the color is richer and more powerfiil than in 
 anything else its author did in oils, and there are pass- 
 ages of sheer rendering, Uke the di^ant ship and the 
 rainbo\v spray firom the tail of the nearer shark, w^hich 
 are inimitable. 
 
 But it is ^A^here the ^ory is lea^ explicit — w^here 
 there seems no ^ory, but only ma^erly painting — 
 that Homer's genius for the telling of his ^ory is mo^ 
 
 35 
 
v^onderful. To paint a simple, every^day occurrence, 
 a part of the routine of life, and by one's treatment of 
 it to reveal its deeper implications and make manife^ 
 the dignity and the romance of the life of ^svhich it 
 forms a part — that is what Millet did for the tillers 
 o( the soil and \vhat Homer does for the fisherman 
 and the sailor. Take, as an in^ance of this. The Fog 
 W^arning. Here is a halibut fisher rowing in v^ith 
 his catch and, as his dory rises on the back of the long 
 wave, looking over his shoulder to make sure of the 
 diredtion of the schooner to v^hich he is returning. 
 Nothing could be simpler than the attitude o£ the 
 man, rowing lAeadily and easily, and there is no sug^ 
 ge^ion of temped or v/reck in this dark sea barely 
 breaking into a white^cap here and there under the 
 influence of a fi:esh breeze. But across the horizon lies 
 a long bank offog, and firom it rise diagonally two or 
 three ragged dreamers ^vhich show that it is begins 
 ning to move toward us. It is enough, and one is as 
 conscious of the mo^ insidious and deadly of the 
 fisherman's perils as o£ the matter^^of-course way in 
 which it is met as a part of the day's v/ork. 
 
 In the greater of salt sea epics. Eight Bells, there is 
 not even so much sugge^ion of danger. Here is a 
 cloudy sky through \vhich the sun breaks dimly, cast:^ 
 ing a gleam upon a flat and tumbled sea, and against it 
 two or three Hnes of cordage shov^ that the ship rides 
 on an even keel. Upon the level deck ^and t^vo men 
 in oilskins, the skipper and his mate, occupied with 
 the mo^ regularly recurring of their daily tasks, the 
 
 3^ 
 
taking of the noonday observation. They do it as a 
 maid would wash the dishes or as a farmer would hoe 
 his corn, yet one is made to feel to the full the import; 
 tance of this daily ad; upon ^vhich the safety of the 
 ship depends. Exacftly in the routine nature of the 
 business seems to He a great part of its significance, 
 and the vv^hole life of the sailor is included in it. 
 
 It is in reality this same gift of ^ory telling — this 
 faculty of dvv^elling on the essentials of the subjedt and 
 of excluding or subordinating less important things — 
 that makes Homer's surf pictures the triumphs they 
 are. Whi^ler could make The Blue Wave, or some 
 of his late sea pieces, bits of pure decoration. Homer, 
 also, \vas not insensible to this decorative beauty of 
 the sea, as he has shown now and again, but generally 
 he seizes upon the v/eight and bulk of v^ater, upon the 
 battering and rending po\ver of the v/av^e, as upon the 
 things essential to be told, and these things he depidls 
 as no one else has ever done. There has never been 
 any difference of opinion about this late^ phase of 
 Homer's art, and his pure marines are universally ac^ 
 cepted as the greate^ ever painted. Yet I think the 
 kind of genius that created them is present in even 
 fuller measure in the fine^ of his figure pidlures. 
 
 After 1900 Homer's powers may be said to have 
 been on the decHne. He v/as ^ill to do things that 
 we should be sorry to lose, but his greater pictures 
 were painted, and his inspirations came more rarely. 
 He had never allowed himself to work by formulae, 
 and he could not go on painting from sheer inertia. 
 
 37 
 
He had alw^ays been dependent upon the immediate 
 sugge^ion of nature or on the vivified memory of such 
 sugge^ion, andv^as apt to feel, after each period ofejc^i 
 hauling creation, that there ^ver^ no more inspira? 
 tions to come, and that his work was done. As early 
 as 1893, ju^ after the recipt of that gold medal of the 
 Columbian Exposition v/hich ^vas the firiA of those 
 honors ^vhich fell thickly upon his declining years, he 
 v/rote: ''At present and for some time pa^ I see no 
 reason why I should paint any pidlures/' These mo? 
 ments of lassitude — one can hardly call it despondent 
 cy, for he v^as fully conscious of the value of his v/ork 
 — became more frequent as he gre^v older, and more 
 than once he declared his intention of painting no 
 more. In 1907, a month or t^vo before he finished in 
 two hours of ^renuous v^ork from nature that Early 
 Morning after Storm, begun tv^o years earlier, "which 
 seems to ^rike a new^ note of beauty in his work, he 
 ^vrote to Miss Leila Mechlin: ''Perhaps you think I 
 am ^ill painting and intere^ed in art. That is a mistake, 
 I care nothing for art. I no longer paint. I do not v/ish 
 to see my name in print again.'' 
 
 The inspirations always returned and he always 
 began again to paint. Even after his fir^ serious ill= 
 ness, in 1908, an illness which made him, for a time, 
 nearly blind and nearly helpless, he v^ould ^ay in his 
 brother's house for only t^vo v/eeks. Leaving a note 
 behind him he departed, early one morning, to re? 
 sume work in his ^udio. 
 
 He had, however, little more to do there. He 
 
 38 
 
HOUND AND HUNTER 
 
 COLLECTION OF MR. LOUIS ETTLINGER 
 
 Signed and dated; Winslow Homer, 1892. Canvas, 28 inches high, 47 V2 inches wide. 
 
 •m 
 
 HIGH CLIFF, COAST OF MAINE 
 
 NATIONAL GALLERY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 EVANS COLLECTION 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1894. Canvas, 30 inches high, 37V2 inches wide. 
 

 aMIAM lO T8A03 .^I^IUD HOIH 
 .D a TH2AV/ ,Yja3aJAO JA^IQITAM 
 
 jfiprti ^*^£ ,dghi ..jdoiii 0£ ,2BvnB3 
 
partly recovered from this fir^ illness, and in 1909 
 he painted two or three canvases \vhich have all his 
 old originality and unexpectedness if not all his old 
 power. The next summer he began to fail visibly, 
 but maintained that he ^was ''all right'' and wanted 
 nothing but to be left alone. When at la^ he had to 
 take to his bed he refused to be moved from his own 
 house, and there, where all his greater work had 
 been done, he died on the twenty ^ninth day of Sep^ 
 tember, 1910. 
 
 PART FOUR 
 
 SO far as we can judge by his effedt upon us, his 
 contemporaries, and without waiting for the ver? 
 did: of posterity, Winslow Homer v/as unquestion^^ 
 ably a great arti^. He has given us pleasures and 
 sensations different in kind from those w^hich we have 
 received from other artists of his time and, perhaps, 
 superior to them in degree. He has sho^vn us things 
 which, without his eyes, we should not have seen 
 and impressed us v/ith truths which, but for him, we 
 should not have felt. He has stirred us with tragic 
 emotion or, in the representation of common every? 
 day incidents, has revealed to us the innate nobiKty 
 of the simple and hardy lives of hunters, fishers and 
 seafarers. Finally, he has reahzed for us, as no other 
 artist of any time has done, the power and the grand? 
 eur of the elemental forces of nature, and has drama? 
 tized for us the conflid; o£ water, earth and air. His 
 genius has been felt alike by artist, by critic and by 
 
 39 
 
layman, and it has been acknov/ledged almost as fully 
 by that contemporary posterity, intelligent foreign 
 opinion, as by the universal assent of his country:; 
 men. No other American painter o{ his generation 
 has been so v^idely recognized except that one ^vho 
 was, in temper and accomplishments, almost his ex^; 
 act antithesis, James McNeill \Vhistler. 
 
 For, surely, no greatly successful artist ever had 
 less care than Homer for those decorative and eesthe^: 
 tic quahties which Whistler proclaimed, in theory 
 and by his practise, the whole of art. There is noth^: 
 ing gracious or insinuating, hardly, even, anything 
 reticent or mysterious, about the art of Homer. His 
 pidtures ^vill not hang comfortably on a v/all or in? 
 vite you discreetly to the contemplation of gradually 
 unfolding beauties. They speak with the voice of a 
 trumpet and, whether they exhilarate or annoy you, 
 you cannot negledl them. They have none of the 
 amenities of the drawingroom, and you might almost 
 as vv^ell let the sea itself into your house as one of 
 Homer's transcripts of it. Even in a great gallery they 
 often seem too trident, too unmitigated, too crude. 
 If they do not conquer you they surprise and discon^s 
 cert you. 
 
 But this asperity has no kinship v/ith the vulgar 
 noisiness of those painters v/ho, thinking of the con? 
 flidt of the exhibitions, determine to outshout their 
 fellows that they may be heard. Homer is not think? 
 ing of exhibitions, to which he seldom cared to send, 
 any more than he is thinking of the final destination 
 
 40 
 
of his picture on someone's walls. He is not thinking 
 of an audience at all, but only of the thing he has seen 
 and of his effort to render it truthfully. He places 
 himself in dired: competition with nature, and if his 
 work seems harsh or violent it has become so in the 
 effort to match nature's ^rength with his own. He 
 painted directly from the objedt whenever that was 
 possible, and it ^vas often possible to him when it 
 might not be so to another. He painted his All's Well 
 entirely by moonlight, never touching it by day or 
 ^vorking over it in the studio. He had a portable 
 painting house constructed, that he might work from 
 nature in the bitterest v/eather, and he used to hang 
 a canvas on the balcony of his studio, in the open air, 
 and study it from a distance ''v/ith reference solely,'' 
 as he said, ''to its simple and absolute truth." This 
 habit of fighting nature on her ov^n terms he carried 
 into work that must necessarily be done from mem? 
 ory, and his studio pictures shov^ the same pitting of 
 his powers against those of nature as do his diredl 
 transcripts from the thing before him. He knev/ quite 
 v/ell that pictures so painted could not be properly 
 seen on the walls of a house or gallery, and'he once 
 advised a friend to look at one of his canvases, then in 
 a dealer's v/indo\v, from the opposite corner, diagon? 
 ally across the street. 
 
 And if Homer has nothing of Whistler's ^stheti:= 
 cism he has almost as Uttle of Inness's passion or of 
 Homer Martin's reverie. Compared to such men he 
 is quite impersonal. He has no lyrical fervor; makes 
 
no attempt to express his own emotion or tiis own 
 mood. His is the objective attitude of the dramatist, 
 and ho^vever much nature may stimulate or excite 
 him, it is her passion and her mood that he is trying 
 to render, not his own. He is too obviously capable 
 of such excitement, and too dependent upon it for his 
 best results, to be called a cool observer— let us rather 
 call him an exalted observer; but an observer and a 
 recorder of things observed he essentially is. He is 
 a kind of flaming realist— a burning devotee of the 
 adtual. 
 
 Being such an observer he was always making the 
 most unexpected observations, and painting things 
 that ^vere not only unpainted till then but, apparent:: 
 ly, unseen by anyone else. His watercolor sketches, 
 in which he set dov^n v^ith astonishing succintness 
 and rapidity the things he sa^v, are a vast repertory 
 of such surprises; but even in his more deeply consid? 
 ered and long ^vrought pidlures he is constantly doing 
 things of a disturbing originality — painting aspedts of 
 nature v/hich another, if he had seen them, v^ould 
 consider unpaintable. For Homer is afraid of nothing 
 and trusts his own perceptions absolutely, having no 
 notion of traditions that must not be violated or of 
 limits that cannot be overstepped. That he has seen 
 a thing, and that it interested him, is reason enough 
 for trying to paint it. Whether he fails or succeeds is 
 hardly his affair — ^vhether the result is pleasing or 
 the reverse is nothing to him — ''I saw it so; there it 
 is/' — The next time it v^ill be a ne^v observation, and 
 
 42 
 
A SUMMER NIGHT 
 THE LUXEMBOURG, PARIS 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1890. 
 
^uoaM-ixajr -tht 
 
until there is a new observation, he will paint no more. 
 Many men have sat by a camp fire at night and 
 have enjoyed, in a dreamy v^ay, \vatching the long 
 curves of Kght cut into the blue darkness by the as- 
 cending sparks. V/ho but Homer v/ould have made 
 them not an accessory but the principle subjed: of a 
 pid:ure? Who but Homer has seen or painted such a 
 thing as that flock of ravenous crows, starved by the 
 long winter, hunting a Hve fox through the heavy 
 snow w^hich retards his superior speed — one of the 
 most superb animal pictures in the world, yet pro^: 
 duced by an artist v/ho has painted no other? He 
 wishes to paint the sea by night, the foam of breakers 
 dark against the glittering wake of the moon. V/ho 
 else ^vould not have feared to disturb the serenity of 
 nature by the presence of figures, or v/ould have dared 
 more, at most, than the black, almost formless, group 
 of silent v/atchers on the rocks ? Homer cuts his fore- 
 ground with the long, straight Une of the platform of 
 a summer cottage or hotel, and places on it, illumined 
 by artificial Hght and so large as to become almost the 
 principal subjedt of the pidlure, tw^o girls v^altzing 
 gether. They ^ve^e there; he saw them and paint=: 
 ed them so, and he triumphs. The girls and the sea 
 dance together, and the very spirit of A Summer 
 Night is fixed upon the canvas. Everyone has seen 
 the moon rise at sunset, and many men must have 
 seen the figures in a boat when the boat itself v/as 
 hidden in the trough of the sea. If any painter saw 
 it, before Homer painted his Kissing the Moon, he as^ 
 
 43 
 
surcdly thought the subjedt impossible. Homer ad^ 
 mits no impossibilities, and having seen it he painted 
 it, the three heads red against the gray=:green sea and 
 the moon like a fourth in the group, only a touch and 
 a sweep of light on the shaft of an oar to indicate that 
 there is anything to support these solid figures in their 
 strange position. You gasp, once, at the unexpedted? 
 ness of the impression, and then accept it as obvious 
 truth. 
 
 These surprise pidtures are not al-ways, or necess: 
 sarily. Homer's best; some of his greatest successes 
 are attained ^svhen dealing with subjedls that anyone 
 might have chosen. But in his treatment of such sub? 
 jedts there is aWays the sense of new and personal 
 vision; the things have not been painted by him bes= 
 cause others had painted them, but rather in spite of 
 that fadl. He has seen them afiresh for himself, and he 
 does not choose to be deterred fi:om painting them be? 
 cause others have seen them also. In a hundred little 
 things you will have the evidence of the lucidity, the 
 acuity and the originality of his observation. The 
 unexpedledness is merely transferred fi?om the v/hole 
 to the details. 
 
 Such being the observer, the recorder of observa? 
 tions spares no pains to make his record as truthfijl as 
 possible. He -will not trust his memory or his notes 
 any farther than he must. He will produce as nearly 
 as possible the conditions of his original observation, 
 that the details may be filled in v/ith his eye upon the 
 objedt; and he ^vill do this not because his memory is 
 
 44 
 
weak, but rather because it is so strong tbat he is sure 
 not to lose sight of his original impression while veri^ 
 fying the details by renewed experiment. The studio 
 in the old University Building in Washington Square, 
 v/hich he occupied from 1861 to 1884, was a room in 
 the tower vv^ith a door opening upon the flat roof of 
 the main building \vhere he could pose his models be:: 
 neath the sky. Most artists of his time painted, as 
 most artists still do, diredt from the model; and many 
 of them would have been glad of his opportunity to 
 paint in the open air. Not many, perhaps, ^vould 
 have pushed the love of exactitude so far as he did 
 when he painted the figures of his Undertow from 
 models kept wet by continual dousing v^ith buckets 
 of w^ater kept at hand for the purpose. This reminds 
 one of some of Meissonier's expedients for securing 
 accuracy; the result v^as different because Homer 
 had a far firmer grasp of the total effed: than Meisson- 
 ier ever possessed, and did not allow his pursuit of 
 minor fadts to obscure his vision of the essential ones. 
 There are other tales of his scrupulousness, such as 
 his propping up the dory of The Fog Warning, at the 
 necessary angle, against a sand dune on the beach and 
 posing his fisherman model in it; or his modelling in 
 clay the ship's bell of All's \Vell when he could not 
 find one to his mind in the junk shops of Boston; but 
 more impressive are the evidences of another kind of 
 scruple, an anxiety for exactitude of effed: which re- 
 minds one more of Monet than of Meissonier. He 
 often waited weeks and months for just the effed: he 
 
 45 
 
wanted, and seemed to his intimates unreasonably 
 idle, because he could not go on vv^ith the pidture he 
 was interested in and could paint nothing else until 
 that was completed. Shooting the Rapids, now in 
 the Metropolitan Museum of New York, ^vas begun 
 in 1904, and Homer expedled to complete it easily as 
 he had made many studies for it; but he could not sat^ 
 isfy himself without another trip to the Upper Sague^ 
 nay to restudy it from nature, and it remained unfin? 
 ished at the time of his death. The Early Morning 
 after Storm at Sea ^vas two years on his easel and, 
 during that time, was the subjedl of a rather volumin? 
 ous correspondence with the dealers ^who had ordered 
 it. Homer's excuse for delay is al^vays that he must 
 ''have a crack at it out of doors,'' as he is not satisfied 
 to ^vork fi:om his original study. In March of 1902 he 
 v/rites: "•Afi:er waiting a full year, looking out every 
 day for it — I got the light and the sea that I \vanted; 
 but as it was very cold I had to paint out of my v^in^: 
 dovv^, and I was a little too far av/ay— it is not good 
 enough yet, and I must have another painting fi:om 
 nature on it." Finally, seven months later, he v/rites 
 again: ''The long looked for day arrived, and fi?om 6 
 to 8 o'clock A. M. I painted firom nature — finishing 
 it, — making the fourth painting on this canvas of two 
 hours each." 
 
 To Homer's ov^n consciousness this acuteness of 
 perception and this thorough and pains^taking realiza^ 
 tion v/ere all there v/as to his art. He had no patience 
 with theories and would seldom talk about painting 
 
 46 
 
THE FOX HUNT 
 
 THE PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1893. Canvas, 38^/^ inches high, 68Vi inches wide. 
 

at all. A fellow artist, since distinguished as a mural 
 painter, once tried to express Kis admiration for the 
 composition of Une and space in Homer's pictures, 
 but he found the master blankly unresponsive and 
 incKned to deny the existence of any such qualities 
 either in his own v^ork or elsewhere — professing, in^^ 
 deed, not to know v^hat \vas meant by the language 
 employed. This can hardly have been affectation in 
 him — one cannot conceive Homer as affedled in any^ 
 thing. He seems honestly to have believed that it is 
 only necessary to knov/ hov/ to see and, above all, to 
 knov/ a good thing when one sees it, and then to copy 
 the thing seen as accurately as possible. He believed 
 that he altered nothing and said to Mr. John W. 
 Beatty: ''When I have selected a thing carefully, I 
 paint it exadtly as it appears.'' It is an illusion shared 
 by other painters of our day, and one can see how 
 Homer might have cherished it with regard to his 
 marines — how, having chosen well, he might not 
 consciously change so much as the line of a rock crest 
 or the color of the shadow under the top of a ^vave. 
 It is more difficult to see how he could have been un? 
 av^are of the po^ve^s of arrangement and interpreta^: 
 tion implied in the creation of his figure pictures, but 
 he seems to have been so. He ^vas not averse, upon 
 occasion, from mentioning the merits of his ^vork, but 
 it is alv/ays accuracy of observation and of record that 
 he praises; and if we accept his own estimate of him^ 
 self it is as a gifted reporter that w^e shall think of him, 
 hardly as a creator. 
 
 47 
 
PART FIVE 
 
 rr IS, of course, quite impossible to accept such an 
 estimate as final. Extraordinary as are Homer's 
 powers o£ observation and o£ record, such pov/ers 
 ^vill not, alone, account for the effedls he produced. 
 A veracious reporter he undoubtedly v/as, but he 
 must have been something more and other than a 
 reporter however veracious. His great pictures are 
 either intensely dramatic or grandly epic, and nei? 
 ther dramatic intensity nor epic serenity ^vere ever 
 attained by veracity alone. They are attainable, in 
 pidlorial as in literary art, only by style. If the effedts 
 are great the art must be great in proportion; if the 
 effedts are vivid the style must be keen and clear; if 
 they are noble the style must be elevated. Conscious^: 
 ly or unconsciously, Winslow Homer was an artist, 
 and it becomes a matter o£ interest to examine the 
 elements of his pidtorial style, to test their v^eakness 
 or strength, to determine, if possible, by \vhat means 
 his results are attained. Beginning v^ith the least im? 
 portant o£ these elements let us study his technical 
 handling of his material, his employment of the me^ 
 dium of oil pointing; then his treatment of Kght and 
 color; then his draughtmanship, his knowledge of and 
 feeling for significant form; finally, reaching the most 
 fundamental of artistic qualities, let us consider his 
 composition and the nature o£ the basic design to 
 w^hich the other elements o( his pidlures are added or 
 out of v^hich they grow. 
 
 48 
 
\VKile felicity in the handling of material is the 
 least important of artistic qualities it is by no means 
 v^ithout importance. Without his extraordinary vir^ 
 tuosity Frans Hals would be a nearly negligible paints 
 er, and the loss of his exquisite treatment of material 
 would considerably diminish the rank of even so great 
 a master as Titian. Or, to take a more modern in^ 
 stance, think ho^v much of Corot \ve should lose with 
 the loss of his lovely surfaces and his admirably flov/- 
 ing touch. Homer's technical handling of oil paint is 
 entirely without charm, and it is abundantly evident 
 that he triumphs not through but in spite of it. Mr. 
 Beatty has said, meaning it for praise: ''No one, I 
 think, w^as ever heard to talk about Homer's manner 
 of painting, or about his technical skill, as of special 
 importance.'' He is so far right that no one has found 
 Homer's technic, in the Kmited sense of the v/ord, a 
 reason for liking or admiring his paintings, but many 
 have found it a reason for disliking them; and to some 
 of the artist's most sincere admirers his technical lim? 
 itations remain a stumbling block in the way of their 
 free enjoyment of his great qualities. In his early 
 work his handling is hard, dry and timid. Later it 
 attains to force and directness, and sometimes to great 
 skill, but never to beauty. It is perhaps at its best in 
 such a pidlure as The West W^ind, w^here the sure- 
 ness of touch and economy of means are striking and, 
 to some degree, enjoyable. The picture looks as if it 
 had been painted in a few^ hours, without a v/asted 
 stroke of the brush, and its v^orkmanlike directness 
 
 49 
 
communicates a certain exhilaration. But this im^: 
 pression of spontaneity, which is the highest pleasure 
 Homer's handling is capable of giving, vanishes \vith 
 further labor, and there is nothing to take its place. 
 His surfaces become wooden or wooly, his handling 
 grows labored and harsh and unpleasing. At best his 
 method is a serviceable tool; at less than its best it is a 
 hindrance to his expression, like a bad handwriting, 
 ^vhich one must become accustomed to and forget be^: 
 fore one can enjoy the thing v^ritten. 
 
 If Homer's color is not, like his workmanship, a 
 positive injury to his expression it seldom reaches the 
 point of being a positive aid to it, at least in those great 
 paintings ^vhich are the most profound expressions 
 of his genius. In both color and handKng his slighter 
 sketches in watercolor reach a standard of excellence 
 he v^as unable to attain in the more difficult medium. 
 Many of his marines are little more than black and 
 white in essential construction, and are almost as 
 effedlive in a good photograph as in the original. In 
 The V/est Wind, for instance, the v/hole of the land 
 and the figure that stands upon it are of a nearly uni^ 
 form brown, while the sky is an opaque gray, of very 
 little quahty , brought dov/n to the edge of the earth in 
 one painting. Across this the v/hite of the breakers 
 is struck with a few frank, strong touches. The con^^ 
 trast of brown and gray, of transparent and opaque, 
 is pleasant; but the whole expression of the pidlure is 
 in its shapes and its values; its color, as color, is near:? 
 ly negligible. This is an extreme case, yet in most o£ 
 
 50 
 
THE LOOKOUT — ALL S WELL 
 THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 Signed and dated; Homer, 1896. Canvas, 42 inches high, 30 inches wide. 
 

the coast scenes the color is really of little more im? 
 portance, though the perfedl notation of degrees of 
 dark and light often gives an illusion of color which is 
 not actually present. In some of the figure pictures 
 color is carried further. In The Herring Net and 
 Eight Bells the grays of sky and v^ater are much more 
 subtly modulated, the dull yellows of the sailors' oil- 
 skins are very true and delicate, and, in the former 
 picture, the rainbow^ gleams of the fish in the net are a 
 fascinating element in the total effedt. Once or twice, 
 v^here the lov^ered key of moonlight has helped him 
 — in All's Well'' for example — Homer comes near 
 that unification of all the separate notes of a pidlure 
 by one prevailing hue v^hich we kno^v as tone, and 
 at least once, in The Gulf Stream, he reaches to^va^ds 
 a fully orchestrated harmony, the blues, especially, 
 in that pidture, being superbly rich and varied. 
 
 But to understand ho^v far Homer's color, even in 
 these examples, is from that of the true colorists, we 
 have only to compare his v^ork v^ith that of such con- 
 temporaries and compatriots as Inness and Martin. 
 Inness's harmonies are full, vibrant, rich, including, 
 on occasion, both extremities of the scale. Martin 
 plays a more delicate flute music, full of tender mod- 
 ulations and tremulous sweetness. But in both the 
 color is the very texture of the ^vork v^hich could not 
 exist v/ithout it. V/ith Homer the color, at its best, 
 is an agreeable ornament vs/hich he can very w^ell dis= 
 pense v/ith. 
 
 And if Homer v^as never extraordinarily sensitive 
 
 51 
 
to color, there is some evidence that, in his later days, 
 he became partially color^bKnd. This evidence first 
 appears, curiously enough, in the richest piece of fiill 
 color he produced in oils. The Gulf Stream. That pic^ 
 ture Avas a long time in his studio, and he may well 
 have added the unexplained and unrelated touch of 
 pure scarlet on the stern of the boat at a time when 
 his sight was beginning to fail. Certainly the scarlet 
 is so vivid, and so without visible reason or connect 
 tion with other things, as to suggest that he did not 
 see it as we do, and that his eye was growing insensi^ 
 tive to red. In his latest v^ork this scarlet spot recurs 
 more than once, and is the more startling fi:om its ap^s 
 pearance in connection with a coldness and harshness 
 of general tone that w^ould of itself suggest a state akin 
 to color blindness. 
 
 There can, on the other hand, be no doubt v/hat? 
 ever of the strength of Homer's native gift for form 
 and for expressive Hne. Almost from his childhood 
 he made dra^vings which have the incisive truth, in 
 attitude and expression of the sketches of a Charles 
 Keene, and, after his Tynemouth studies, his figures, 
 especially of women, attain a grandeur and nobiUty 
 of type which makes them almost worthy to be com:; 
 pared with the majestic figures of Millet. In no other 
 part of his art does he show so much sense of beau? 
 ty as in some of these grave and simple figures v/ith 
 their ample forms, their sloyv gesture, their quiet and 
 unforced dignity of bearing. At its highest level his 
 drawing of the male figure is, if less beautiful, almost 
 
equally impressive; and his grasp of attitude is almost 
 infallible. Whatever his people are doing they do 
 rightly and naturally, with the exadt amount of effort 
 necessary, neither more nor less, and with an entire 
 absence of artificial posing. Infallible, also is his sense 
 of bulk and weight. His figures are alv/ays three? 
 dimensional, and alv^ays firmly planted on their feet 
 — they occupy a definite amount of space, and yield 
 to, or resist, a definite amount of gravitation or ofex^ 
 ternal force. 
 
 These are among the greatest gifts of the figure 
 draughtsman, and there can be Httle doubt that 
 Homer had the natural qualifications for a draughts? 
 man of the first order. But no man, whatever his 
 natural gifts, ever mastered the structure of the hu? 
 man figure ^vithout a prolonged investigation of that 
 figure disembarrassed from the disguise of clothing. 
 A profound and intense study of the nude is indis? 
 pensable to the mastery of its secrets, and for such 
 study Homer had Httle opportunity and less inclina? 
 tion. He received no training from others and, in the 
 confidence of his strength, failed to appreciate the ne? 
 cessity of giving it to himself; and his figures, though 
 right in bulk and attitude, are often almost structure? 
 less. This lack of structure is seldom so painfully ap? 
 parent as in the rounded pudginess, like that of an 
 inflated bladder, of the w^oman in The Life Line, but 
 even in his best figures there are regretable lapses and 
 passages of emptiness. The arms of the three girls in 
 A Voice from the CKffs are beautifully and naturally 
 
 53 
 
arranged, but they are not what a trained draughts^: 
 man could call arms — there are no bones or muscles 
 under the skin— and even the figures in Undertow, 
 his most strenuous and most successfiil piece of figure 
 dra^ving, are not impeccable, not without regions of 
 woodenness or puffiness. 
 
 Perhaps wisely, he never again made such an effort 
 — for at fifty, if ever, it is time to use the acquirements 
 one has rather than to strive for new ones — and his 
 figure drawing relapses, in his later work, into sum? 
 mary indications, sufficient for his purpose but slight? 
 er and sUghter in structure. 
 
 But if Homer had neither the right kind nor the right 
 amount of training for the figure draughtsman, he had 
 the only right and true training for the draughtsman 
 of rocks and v^aves, and no one has ever drav/n them 
 better. Constant observation had taught him all that 
 it is needful to knov/ of their forms, and had fully sup? 
 plemented his natural gifts. No one has so felt and 
 expressed the soKd resistance o{ rock, the vast bulk 
 and hammering weight of water, the rush and move? 
 ment of ^vave and vv^ind. It is the suggestion of v;^eight 
 and movement that makes his figure drav^ing im? 
 pressive in spite of its lapses — it is in the suggestion o£ 
 weight and movement that his dra^ving of land and 
 sea is unmatched and unsurpassable. 
 
 A sense of weight and of movement is, hov^ever, 
 much more a matter of design— of the composition of 
 hne — than of drawing in the usual meaning of that 
 word. Indeed, the sense o{ movement can be con? 
 
 54 
 
EARLY MORNING AFTER STORM AT SEA 
 COLLECTION OF MR. ^V. K. BIXBY 
 

\ 
 
 f 
 
 ^ 
 
veyed by nothing else but composition. The most 
 accurately drawn figure of man or horse or bird ^vill 
 refuse to move unless its Unes, and the lines of sur? 
 rounding objects, are so arranged as to compel the 
 eye o£ the spectator to follow the direction of the 
 desired movement. It is by composition, therefore, 
 that Homer obtains his effedts of movement, and it 
 is by composition that he obtains all his great effedts. 
 From the very first he shoves some of the qualities of 
 a master designer; he alvv^ays places his subjedt rights 
 ly within the redlangle of his border, he always bal^ 
 ances feHcitously his filled and empty spaces; and as 
 his power of observation becomes more and more 
 acute his power of design keeps pace with it, his 
 most original observations being infaUibly embodied 
 in equally original designs. 
 
 An admirable instance of the expressiveness of 
 Homer's composition, at a comparatively early date, 
 is the httle ^vatercolor of Berry Pickers of 1873. At 
 first sight it is a simple transcript from nature, w^ith 
 httle style in either the d^a^ving or the color, yet it is 
 full of a charm difficult to account for. And then one 
 notices that the Unes of all the subordinate figures lead 
 straight to the head of the taller girl, standing alone on 
 the left, and that she has a blowing ribbon on her hat. 
 The hne of that ribbon takes possession of the eye, 
 which is carried by it, and by the clouds in the sky, 
 straight across the picture to the other end v/here, so 
 small as to be otherwise unnoticeable, a singing bird 
 sits upon the branch of a bare shrub. By that sub:: 
 
 55 
 
tie bit o£ arrangement the air has been filled not only 
 vv^ith sun and breeze but v/ith music, and the ex? 
 pression of the summer morning is complete. That 
 Homer himself may have been una\vare of \vhat he 
 had done is suggested by the fadl that w^hen he repro? 
 duced this composition, reversed by the engraver, in 
 ''Harper's Weekly'' he utterly spoiled it by the in:: 
 trodudtion of another figure, at what has become the 
 left, which disturbs the balance and attradts the eye 
 avv^ay from the bird. Whether the change Avas made 
 to please the publishers, or for some other reason, the 
 music has gone and the pidlure is dead. 
 
 NoAV look at a quite late pidture. The Search Light 
 of 1899. •'■^ ^^ almost totally v/ithout color, and has 
 not even that approach to unity of tone which moon:: 
 light sometimes enabled Homer to attain. In hand- 
 ling it is poor and harsh, and there are no objedts in it 
 w^hich require more of the draughtsman than a fairly 
 corredl eye for the sizes and shapes of things. Yet the 
 pidlure is grandly impressive. Ho^v is this impress 
 siveness secured? It can be by nothing but composi? 
 tion, and by composition at its simplest. The perfedl 
 balancing of t^vo or three masses, the perfedt coordi:= 
 nation of a few straight lines and a few segments of 
 circles, and the thing is done — a great pidture is creat- 
 ed out of nothing and v/ith almost no aid from any 
 other element of the art of painting than this all im== 
 portant one of design. 
 
 It is always so ^vith Homer. The gravity, the sense 
 of serious import, the feeling that the adtion in hand is 
 
 5^ 
 
one of great and permanent interest, not a trivial oc^ 
 cupation of the moment, is given to Eight Bells by the 
 masterly use of a fe^^ verticals and horizontals. The 
 rush and sv^oop of The \Vest Wind is a matter of a 
 few sweeping and reduplicating curves. The patterns 
 of The Fox Hunt and All's Well are as astonishingly 
 fresh and unexpected as the observations they contain 
 and control. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest test of a designer is his use of 
 little things to produce unexpectedly great effects, and 
 a remarkable instance of this is to be found in The Gulf 
 Stream. Remove the trailing ropes from the bow of 
 the tubby boat and its helpless sliding into the trough 
 of the sea will be checked, the ghastly gliding of the 
 sharks v/ill be arrested, and the fine v^ave drawing 
 w^ill not avail to keep the pidture aUve and moving. 
 
 In Homer's mastery of design v/e have a quality 
 "which is, if not precisely decorative, preeminently 
 monumental; a quality v/hich explains the desire, 
 once expressed to me by La Farge, that Homer might 
 be given a commission for a great mural painting; a 
 quahty which makes one regret the loss of the mural 
 decorations he actually undertook for Harper and 
 Brothers. In this mastery of design v/e have, un- 
 doubtedly, that w^hich gives Homer his authoritative 
 and magisterial utterance; that ^vhich constitutes him 
 a creator, that which transforms him from an acute 
 observer and a brilliant reporter into a great and orig^ 
 inal artist. A poor technician, an unequal colorist, a 
 powerful but untrained draughtsman, his faults might 
 
 $7 
 
almost overbear his merits were Ke not a designer of 
 the first rank. Because he is a designer of the first 
 rank he is fairly certain to be permanently reckoned 
 a master. 
 
 PART SIX 
 
 IN that chapter of his ''Your United States'' which 
 deals Avith art in America Mr. Arnold Bennett tells 
 us that one of his reasons for coming to this country 
 was his desire o£ seeing the pidtures o{ Winslow 
 Homer, that when he saw them he did not like them, 
 but that, coming upon an exhibition of Homer's Ava? 
 tercolors, he was forced to reconsider his judgment. 
 He found ''these summary and highly distinguished 
 sketches" to be beautifiil, thrilling and "clearly the 
 productions of a master." One may guess that Mr. 
 Bennett did not see the best of Homer's pidlures in oil 
 as, assuredly, he did not see much else in American 
 art that might, or should, have interested him; but it 
 is quite possible that further study would have lefi: 
 him of the same opinion, and that he would still have 
 considered the watercolors superior to the oils. If he 
 did so he Avould only be in line ^vith a great deal of 
 modern opinion ^vhich prefers the immediacy and 
 vividness of the sketch to the ponderation of the 
 considered pidture, and which rates the multitude of 
 Millet's drawings and pastels higher than The Glean? 
 ers or the noble \Voman with Buckets in the Van? 
 derbilt coUedlion. Indeed, there is better reason for 
 such a preference in the case of Homer than in that 
 
 58 
 
of Millet, for Millet was, v^hat Homer never quite 
 became, a master o£ oil painting, and could give a 
 richness of color and a beauty of material to his pic? 
 tures which Homer was quite incapable of emulating. 
 
 Homer's earlier v/atercolors are neat, careful, 
 rather tinted than colored, but pleasanter and far 
 more skillful than the oil paintings of the same period. 
 The transparency of the v/ashes and the deft decisive:: 
 ness of touch give them a charm and sparkle proper 
 to the medium. They are already the production of a 
 more competent ^workman than their author ever be? 
 came in the sister art. The Tynemouth series, not all 
 of v^hich were painted in Tynemouth, for some of 
 them are dated several years after the painter's re? 
 turn to America, differ from both the earlier and later 
 work in being complete pictures, carefully composed 
 and elaborately wrought. As such one thinks of them 
 in their place among the other compositions of their 
 creator, not v/ith the rapid and astonishing notes and 
 sketches of his later years. It was a collection of these 
 later sketches that Bennett sa^v and admired. It v/as 
 by a coUedlion of such sketches that Homer chose to 
 be represented at the Pan? American Exposition of 
 1901. It is by these sketches that many artists and 
 many critics of today v^ould consider Homer most 
 hkely to be remembered. 
 
 There must be reasons, more or less valid, for a 
 preference so vividly felt — felt, at times, by Homer 
 himself — for these watercolors over his more elabo? 
 rate ^vo^ks in oil, and one of these reasons I have 
 
 59 
 
already touclicd upon; it is Homer's extraordinary 
 technical mastery of the medium. If, from the first, 
 he painted better in ^watercolors than he was ever 
 able to do in oils, it may be said that, in the end, he 
 painted better in watercolors — with more virtuosity 
 of hand, more sense of the right use of the material, 
 more decisive mastery of its proper resources— than 
 almost any modern has been able to do in oils. One 
 must go back to Rubens or Hals for a parallel, in oil 
 painting, to Homer's prodigious skill in v/atercolor, 
 and perhaps to the Venetians for anything so perfed:*: 
 ly right in its technical manner. His feHcity and ra? 
 pidity of handling is a deKght, and to see the way, for 
 instance, in which all the compHcated forms and fore? 
 shortenings of the head of a palm tree are given in a 
 few instantaneous touches, each touch of a shape one 
 would hardly have thought of, yet each indisputably 
 right in character, is to have a new revelation of the 
 magical power o£ sheer workmanship. Even Sar^^ 
 gent's stupendous cleverness in watercolor is not 
 more wonderful, though Sargent seems to be think^s 
 ing a httle of the brilliancy o£ his method, whereas 
 Homer is thinking, single^mindedly, of the objedl or 
 the effedl to be rendered, and is clever only because 
 he is sure of what he wants to do and seizes instinct 
 tively on the nearest way of doing it. 
 
 And this sv/iftness and certainty of hand is dehghts: 
 ful not merely for its own sake but because it insures 
 the greatest purity and beauty of the material. The 
 highest perfection of oil painting depends upon coms^ 
 
 60 
 
plicated processes vv^hich are almost impossible to the 
 painter from nature, impatient to set down his obser? 
 vations while they are immanent to his mind; and 
 these processes our modern painters have, for the 
 most part, forgotten. The perfection of watercolor 
 depends, largely, upon diredlness and rapidity. The 
 material is never so beautiful as when it is v/ashed 
 in at once, with as little disturbance by rev/orking 
 as may be, the v^hite paper everywhere clear and 
 luminous beneath and bet^veen the v^ashes. It is 
 the ideal material for rapid sketching from nature be? 
 cause the sketcher, instead of sacrificing technical 
 beauty to diredlness of expression, gains greater beau? 
 ty v/ith every increase of speed. Therefore, for the 
 fastidious in technical matters. Homer's sudden nota? 
 tions of things observed have an extraordinary charm 
 which comes of the perfect harmony bet\veen the end 
 sought and the means employed. The more his mind 
 is fixed upon the rendering of his impression and the 
 less he thinks o£ his material the more beautiful his 
 material becomes. The accuracy of his observation, 
 the rapidity of his execution and the perfection of his 
 technic increase together, and reach their highest 
 value at the same moment. The one little square of 
 paper becomes a true record of the appearance of na? 
 ture, an amazing bit of sleight of hand, and a piece o£ 
 perfedl material beauty; it gives you three kinds of 
 pleasure, intimately related and united, and each in 
 the highest degree. 
 
 Following from this technical superiority and 
 
 6i 
 
closely connedled with it is the second, and more im? 
 portant, superiority of Homer's watercolors; they are 
 vastly more beautiful in color than are the best of his 
 oil paintings. Oil painting, in its perfedlion, is capa^^ 
 ble o£ a depth and splendor o£ color which water:: 
 color painting can never equal, but oil painting as it 
 is generally practised today, and as Homer practised 
 it, is relatively poor and opaque in color, muddy and 
 chalky or brown and heavy. Almost any ^vatercolor 
 painter, if he will refrain from emulating the soKdity 
 of oil paint and eschew the use of Chinese white, can 
 attain a purity and brilliancy of tone vv^hich is very 
 rare in modern oil painting. A master of the material, 
 hke Homer, capable of striking in a hue v/ith its full 
 intensity at once, \vith just the gradations and modu^^ 
 lations he ^shes it to have, can make every particle 
 of his color sing, and can reach effedts either offeree 
 or tenderness that are impossible to the flounderers in 
 that pasty mass v^hich modern oil painting too readily 
 becomes. 
 
 Of course the use of a particular method does not 
 radically alter the nature of the man who employs it, 
 and so, although Homer's color is far better in these 
 w^atercolor sketches than in his oils, he does not, even 
 in them, become, in the full sense of the ^vords, a true 
 colorist. He is never one of those artists for \vhom 
 color is the supreme and necessary means of expres^^ 
 sion. His art does not live in color and by color as the 
 art of a musician exists in and by musical sounds; but, 
 aided by the beauty and transparency of the material, 
 
 62 
 
he show^s himself in his watercolors, as he seldom does 
 in oils, an acute and daring observer and recorder of 
 the colors of nature. He is not expressing deep emos: 
 tions in color, ^v^iting lyrics or composing symphony 
 ies; he is only telling you ^vhat he has seen. But he has 
 seen all sorts of surprising things, sometimes beauti^: 
 ful, sometimes strange, often violent and almost savs: 
 age, and he tells of them v^ith a perfed: impartiality 
 and in a language of the utmost perspicuity and vigor. 
 The intense blue of a tropic sea, the red and black of 
 a stormy sunset, the spots on the gleaming sides of a 
 leaping trout, the deep plumage of a v/ild duck — all 
 these things are set dov/n at a white heat, sv^iftly, 
 sharply, decisively, before the impression has faded, 
 and they are set do^vn, therefore, v/ith the greatest 
 truth, the greatest vividness, the greatest intensity. 
 It is, finally, this immediacy of impression, this in;: 
 stantaneousness of vision, even more than the beauty 
 of technic or the purity of color v^hich are its accom^ 
 paniments, that is in itself the great charm of Homer*s 
 watercolors. And the diversity and multipKcity of 
 his observations are as remarkable as their freshness 
 and their truth. Apparently there is nothing he has 
 not seen and painted at one time or another. Figures, 
 landscapes, sea, boats, architecture, still Kfe, the shad^ 
 ow of the North Woods or the pitiless southern sun; 
 about all these things — about anything, from a dash? 
 ing catarad: to a lemon on a plate — he can teU you 
 something nev/ and unexpected. He is one of the 
 greatest observers that ever lived, and in these sketch:: 
 
 ^3 
 
es you may ^vatch him at his v^ork, catch his excite^ 
 ment at the discovery o£ some new effedt or some 
 hitherto unnoticed truth, see v^hat he sav^ and feel 
 what he felt, with the least possible impediment he? 
 tween his mind and yours. No ^vender Arnold Ben? 
 nett found such sketches thrilling. You are reading 
 the note hooks of a sort of reporter in excelsis of na? 
 ture's doings, and you are delighted w^ith his accur^: 
 acy, astonished at his variety, overwhelmed by his 
 prodigal abundance. If you share the modern love for 
 fadls and have anything of the modern carelessness 
 of art you will ask for nothing more, and will prefer 
 such notes to any possible v^ork of art that might be 
 constructed from them. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you are one who feels that 
 a complete ^vork of art is something different from 
 and more than a sketch, you may still enjoy these 
 sketches intensely w^hile asking for your fullest satis? 
 fadlion something more definitely designed and more 
 deeply considered. With all their brilliancy these 
 amazing notes are only notes, and Homer ^vas capa:^ 
 ble of something more than notes. Hundreds of these 
 sketches were set down for their own sake and never 
 referred to again. Many of the oil pidtures seem to 
 have had no specific preparation, but to have been bes^ 
 gun diredtly from nature or from a memory enriched 
 by the constant study of nature. But now and then 
 one can identify the original watercolor sketch and 
 the pidture painted from it, and then one can see clear? 
 ly the defedls which are an inevitable accompaniment 
 
 64 
 
of the merits of such sketching. You cannot have at 
 the same time, and in the same work, the merits of 
 the sketch and of the pid:ure; and if the picflure is in? 
 ferior in spontaneity to the sketch it is as manifestly 
 superior to it in concentration and power. In the 
 Memorial Exhibition of Homer's works, held at the 
 Metropolitan Museum in 191 1, the original watercol? 
 or of Hound and Hunter and the final painting of the 
 same subjecft hung together, and the comparison of 
 them was instructive. At first sight the w^atercolor 
 w^as the more taking. It is exhilarating in the firesh 
 sparkle of its handling, and the color, if not rich or in? 
 tense, is clear and cool. The oil pid:ure seemed heavy 
 and snufiy by contrast and, as mere painting, rather 
 uninteresting. Yet the oil pidlure is almost inexplic? 
 ably impressive and remains firmly fixed in one's 
 memory \vhile the watercolor has faded from it. The 
 difference is in countless little changes which have 
 transformed a bit of reporting into a masterly design. 
 Everything has been so adjusted and so definitely fit? 
 ted into its place that the result is that sense of per? 
 manence and of unalterableness v/hich is perhaps the 
 greatest feeling a v/ork of art can produce. 
 
 It is this relative lack of design which makes the 
 watercolor sketches of Homer, perfed: though they 
 are as sketches, inferior to his great compositions in 
 oil. They are marvelous, they are admirable, they 
 are distinguished, but they are sketches. They re? 
 main the small change of that great talent which 
 could produce Eight Bells or The Fox Hunt. In their 
 
 65 
 
sharpness of seeing, their vivacity of handling, their 
 luminous and intense coloring, they give a different 
 pleasure from that v/hich v^e receive from the master? 
 pieces — a pleasure, at times, even more keen — but, as 
 I think, a pleasure of a somewhat low^er kind. 
 
 It is, hov/ever, a matter of very little importance 
 ^vhethe^ we like better Homer's watercolors or his oil 
 paintings, since it is the same man ^vho produced both. 
 And, indeed, the difference bet^veen his performance 
 in the two mediums is a difference of degree rather 
 than of kind — a difference of relative emphasis only 
 — the yvhole Homer being, after all, necessary to ac? 
 count for anything he did. The consumate designer 
 of the great compositions based his design upon the 
 same acute observation that delights us in the sketch^: 
 es; the briUiant sketcher, though he does not carry 
 design to its ultimate perfection, is yet al^vays a born 
 designer, so that almost any one of his sketches has 
 the possibility of a great pidture in it, and his sKghtest 
 note is a whole, not a mere fragment. To lose any 
 part of his work v/ere to lose something that no one 
 else can give us. Add to the broad humanity, the 
 po^sver of narration and the magnificent design of his 
 major works the exhaustless wealth of his masterful 
 and succindt jottings of natural appearances, and you 
 have the sum of \Vinslow Homer — surely one of the 
 most remarkable personaHties in the art of this or any 
 country in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 
 
 66 
 
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