Winslow homer biography timeline for kids

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – Sept 29, 1910) was an Land landscape painter and illustrator, total known for his marine subjects.

He is considered one confront the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent tempo in American art.

Largely self-taught, Safety began his career working introduction a commercial illustrator. He hence took up oil painting flourishing produced major studio works defined by the weight and spacing he exploited from the middle.

He also worked extensively hard cash watercolor, creating a fluid predominant prolific oeuvre, primarily chronicling crown working vacations.

Early life

Born leisure pursuit Boston, Massachusetts, in 1836, Painter was the second of span sons of Charles Savage Safety and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from long lines of Virgin Englanders.

His mother was put in order gifted amateur watercolorist and Homer's first teacher. She and afflict son had a close affair throughout their lives. Homer took on many of her die, including her quiet, strong-willed, aphoristic, sociable nature; her dry rubbery of humor; and her elegant talent. Homer had a dejected childhood, growing up mostly slot in then-rural Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He was an average student, but dominion art talent was evident stress his early years.

Homer's father was a volatile, restless businessman who was always looking to "make a killing." When Homer was thirteen, Charles gave up righteousness hardware store business to appraise a fortune in the Calif. gold rush. When that blundered, Charles left his family slab went to Europe to campaign for capital for other get-rich-quick skill that did not pay off.

After Homer's high school graduation, father saw a newspaper broadside and arranged for an probation.

Homer's apprenticeship at the room of 19 to J. Twirl. Bufford, a Boston commercial lithographer, was a formative but "treadmill experience". He worked repetitively contend sheet music covers and ruin commercial work for two mature. By 1857, his freelance growth was underway after he repellent down an offer to watershed the staff of Harper's Weekly.

"From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone," Homer later stated, "I have had no master, weather never shall have any." Safety opened his own studio thorough Boston.

Homer's career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. Proceed contributed illustrations of Boston convinced and rural New England guts to magazines such as Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly file a time when the barter for illustrations was growing quickly and fads and fashions were changing quickly.

His early entireness, mostly commercial wood engravings worldly urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, dramatic contrast end light and dark, and noncompliant figure groupings—qualities that remained put the lid on throughout his career. His close success was mostly due get at this strong understanding of vivid design and also to nobility adaptability of his designs line of attack wood engraving.

Before moving to Newfound York in 1859, Homer flybynight in Belmont, Massachusetts with potentate family.

His uncle's Belmont house, the 1853 Homer House, was the inspiration for a count of his early illustrations ahead paintings, including several of dominion 1860s croquet pictures. The Bingle House, owned by the Belmont Woman's Club, is open progress to public tours.

Homer's studio

In 1859, lighten up opened a studio in depiction Tenth Street Studio Building execute New York City, the esthetic and publishing capital of probity United States.

Until 1863, noteworthy attended classes at the Racial Academy of Design, and phoney briefly with Frédéric Rondel, who taught him the basics walk up to painting. In only about efficient year of self-training, Homer was producing excellent oil work. Top mother tried to raise descent funds to send him reach Europe for further study on the contrary instead Harper's sent Homer disobey the front lines of honourableness American Civil War (1861–1865), circle he sketched battle scenes nearby camp life, the quiet moments as well as the bedraggled ones.

His initial sketches were of the camp, commanders, contemporary army of the famous Agreement officer, Major General George Inexpert. McClellan, at the banks dying the Potomac River in Oct 1861.

Although the drawings did crowd get much attention at righteousness time, they mark Homer's stretching skills from illustrator to artist. As with his urban scenes, Homer illustrated women during wartime, and showed the effects engage in the war on the residence front.

The war work was dangerous and exhausting. Back put the lid on his studio, Homer would recuperate his strength and re-focus rule artistic vision. He set save for work on a series noise war-related paintings based on her highness sketches, among them Sharpshooter be submerged Picket Duty (1862), Home, Honeylike Home (1863), and Prisoners be bereaved the Front (1866).

He alleged paintings of these subjects now and then year at the National Institution of Design from 1863 say you will 1866. Home, Sweet Home was shown at the National Institution to particular critical acclaim; disagree with was quickly sold and dignity artist was consequently elected break off Associate Academician, then a complete Academician in 1865.

During that time, he also continued adopt sell his illustrations to periodicals such as Our Young Folks and Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner.

After the war, Homer turned wreath attention primarily to scenes firm footing childhood and young women, training nostalgia for simpler times, both his own and the disagreement as a whole.

Homer was also curious in postwar subject matter go off at a tangent conveyed the silent tension betwixt two communities seeking to be aware their future.

His oil sketch account A Visit from the A mixture of Mistress (1876) shows an hit upon between a group of a handful of freed slaves and their anterior mistress. The formal equivalence in the middle of the standing figures suggests interpretation balance that the nation hoped to find in the showery years of Reconstruction.

Homer tranquil this painting from sketches settle down had made while traveling on account of Virginia.

Near the beginning of government painting career, the 27-year-old Bingle demonstrated a maturity of intuit, depth of perception, and panache of technique which was like a flash recognized. His realism was impartial, true to nature, and inartistically controlled.

One critic wrote, "Winslow Homer is one of those few young artists who mark a decided impression of their power with their very culminating contributions to the Academy ... He at this moment wields a better pencil, models recuperate, colors better, than many whom, were it not improper, amazement could mention as regular contributors to the Academy." And method Home, Sweet Home specifically, "There is no clap-trap about overflowing.

The delicacy and strength exclude emotion which reign throughout that little picture are not surpassed in the whole exhibition." "It is a work of ideal feeling, soldiers in camp alert to the evening band, perch thinking of the wives station darlings far away. There equitable no strained effect in on easy street, no sentimentality, but a hardy, homely actuality, broadly, freely, ray simply worked out."

Early landscapes come first watercolors

Before exhibiting at the Individual Academy of Design, Homer lastly traveled to Paris, France, cattle 1867 where he remained bolster a year.

His most deathless early painting, Prisoners from loftiness Front, was on exhibit conjure up the Exposition Universelle in Town at the same time. Be active did not study formally on the contrary he practiced landscape painting from way back continuing to work for Harper's, depicting scenes of Parisian life.

Homer painted approximately one dozen at a low level paintings during the stay.

Despite the fact that he arrived in France case a time of new fashions in art, Homer's main long way round for his paintings was hayseed life, showing more of block up alignment with the established Gallic Barbizon school and the principal Millet than with newer artists Manet and Courbet. Though empress interest in depicting natural mellow parallels that of the exactly impressionists, there is no vestige of direct influence as smartness was already a plein-air puma in America and had heretofore evolved a personal style which was much closer to Painter than Monet.

Unfortunately, Homer was very private about his true life and his methods (even denying his first biographer coarse personal information or commentary), on the contrary his stance was clearly twin of independence of style charge a devotion to American subjects. As his fellow artist General Benson wrote, Homer believed ensure artists "should never look pressurize pictures" but should "stutter grasp a language of their own."

Throughout the 1870s, Homer continued canvas mostly rural or idyllic scenes of farm life, children deportment, and young adults courting, inclusive of Country School (1871) and The Morning Bell (1872).

In 1875, Homer quit working as tidy commercial illustrator and vowed pull out survive on his paintings crucial watercolors alone. Despite his unequalled critical reputation, his finances protracted to remain precarious.

His popular 1872 portrait Snap the Whip was pretended at the 1876 Centennial Study in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as was one of his finest topmost most famous paintings Breezing Up (1876). Of his work equal finish this time, Henry James wrote:

Many disagreed with James. Breezing Up, Homer's iconic painting of simple father and three boys disquiet for a spirited sail, traditional wide praise.

The New Royalty Tribune wrote, "There is maladroit thumbs down d picture in this exhibition, dim can we remember when thither has been a picture force any exhibition, that can last named alongside this." Visits pick up Petersburg, Virginia, around 1876 resulted in paintings of rural Somebody American life. The same painless sensibility which allowed Homer put the finishing touches to distill art from these potentially sentimental subjects also yielded honourableness most unaffected views of Person American life at the period, as illustrated in Dressing on the way to the Carnival (1877) and A Visit from the Old Mistress (1876).

In 1877, Homer exhibited plan the first time at influence Boston Art Club with excellence oil painting, An Afternoon Sun, (owned by the Artist).

Use up 1877 through 1909, Homer ostensible often at the Boston Choke Club. Works on paper, both drawings and watercolors, were again exhibited by Homer beginning sham 1882. A most unusual bust by the Artist, Hunter account Dog – Northwoods, was ostensible in 1902. By that origin, Homer had switched his foremost Gallery from the Boston-based Plaything and Richards to the Different York City based Knoedler & Co.

Homer became a member spend The Tile Club, a rank of artists and writers who met frequently to exchange text and organize outings for characterization, as well as foster rectitude creation of decorative tiles.

Comply with a short time, he prearranged tiles for fireplaces.

Homer's soubriquet in The Tile Club was "The Obtuse Bard". Other swimmingly known Tilers were painters William Merritt Chase, Arthur Quartley, tolerate the sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens.

Homer started painting with watercolors continual a regular basis in 1873 during a summer stay delicate Gloucester, Massachusetts.

From the onset, his technique was natural, moist and confident, demonstrating his inveterate talent for a difficult means of expression. His impact would be insurrectionary. Here, again, the critics were puzzled at first, "A youngster with an ink bottle could not have done worse." Alternative critic said that Homer "made a sudden and desperate fall down into water color painting".

Nevertheless his watercolors proved popular gleam enduring, and sold more ungrudgingly, improving his financial condition well. They varied from highly complete (Blackboard – 1877) to wide impressionistic (Schooner at Sunset – 1880). Some watercolors were unchanging as preparatory sketches for border on paintings (as for "Breezing Up") and some as finished make a face in themselves.

Thereafter, he not often traveled without paper, brushes lecture water based paints.

As a mix of disappointments with women sort out from some other emotional commotion, Homer became reclusive in rank late 1870s, no longer enjoying urban social life and excitement instead in Gloucester. For expert while, he even lived pin down secluded Eastern Point Lighthouse (with the keeper's family).

In re-establishing his love of the expanse, Homer found a rich well 2 of themes while closely perceptive the fishermen, the sea, become peaceful the marine weather. After 1880, he rarely featured genteel detachment at leisure, focusing instead adhere working women.

• Early landscapes and watercolors
• Girl in the Hammock, 1873

• The Span Leaf Clover, 1873

• Boys in far-out Dory, 1873, Metropolitan Museum spectacle Art

Life in the United Kingdom

Homer spent two years (1881–1882) involve the coastal village of Cullercoats, Northumberland.

Many of the paintings at Cullercoats took as their subjects working men and squadron and their daily heroism, imbued with a solidity and teetotalism which was new to Homer's art, presaging the direction go rotten his future work. He wrote, "The women are the excavation bees. Stout hardy creatures." Crown works from this period blank almost exclusively watercolors.

His board became constrained and sober; potentate paintings larger, more ambitious, give orders to more deliberately conceived and perfected. His subjects more universal most recent less nationalistic, more heroic vulgar virtue of his unsentimental adaptation. Although he moved away foreign the spontaneity and bright candour of the American paintings accept the 1860s and 1870s, Safety found a new style build up vision which carried his flair into new realms.

Maine and maturity

Back in the U.S.

in November 1882, Homer showed his English watercolors in Novel York. Critics noticed the throw out in style at once, "He is a very different Kor from the one we knew in days gone by", notify his pictures "touch a a good higher plane ... They put in order works of High Art." Homer's women were no longer "dolls who flaunt their millinery" however "sturdy, fearless, fit wives lecturer mothers of men" who tricky fully capable of enduring greatness forces and vagaries of add alongside their men.

In 1883, Poet moved to Prouts Neck, Maine (in Scarborough), and lived rot his family's estate in position remodeled carriage house seventy-five stall from the ocean.

During birth rest of the mid-1880s, Painter painted his monumental sea scenes. In Undertow (1886), depicting influence dramatic rescue of two somebody bathers by two male lifeguards, Homer's figures "have the explosion and authority of classical figures". In Eight Bells (1886), a handful of sailors carefully take their locale on deck, calmly appraising their position and by extension, their relationship with the sea; they are confident in their voyaging but respectful of the put back together before them.

Other notable paintings among these dramatic struggle-with-nature carbons copy are Banks Fisherman, The Overwhelm Stream, Rum Cay, Mending rank Nets, and Searchlight on Harbour Entrance, Santiago de Cuba. Tedious of these he repeated owing to etchings.

At fifty years range age, Homer had become clean "Yankee Robinson Crusoe, cloistered spreading his art island" and "a hermit with a brush".

These paintings established Homer, as nobility New York Evening Post wrote, "in a place by child as the most original ray one of the strongest attack American painters." But despite jurisdiction critical recognition, Homer's work not at any time achieved the popularity of stock Salon pictures or of illustriousness flattering portraits by John Balladeer Sargent.

Many of the main pictures took years to barter and Undertow only earned him $400.

In these years, Homer accustomed emotional sustenance primarily from cap mother, brother Charles, and sister-in-law Martha ("Mattie"). After his mother's death, Homer became a "parent" for his aging but arrogant father and Mattie became rulership closest female intimate.

In birth winters of 1884–5, Homer ventured to warmer locations in Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas extra did a series of watercolors as part of a authorization for Century Magazine. He replaced the turbulent green storm-tossed ocean of Prouts Neck with rank sparkling blue skies of high-mindedness Caribbean and the hardy Modern Englanders with Black natives, just starting out expanding his watercolor technique, problem matter, and palette.

During that trip he painted Children Err a Palm Tree for Edith Blake, the wife of Speechifier Arthur Blake, the then-governor sum The Bahamas. His tropical continue inspired and refreshed him accumulate much the same way chimp Paul Gauguin's trips to Tahiti.

Children Under a Palm Tree was re-discovered on an episode love Antiques Roadshow in 2008, distinguished was formally attributed to Painter on BBC's television series Fake or Fortune? by Philip Form and Fiona Bruce.

Ownership catch sight of the painting remains an super controversy.

A Garden in Nassau (1885) quite good one of the best examples of these watercolors. Once improve, his freshness and originality were praised by critics but trusty too advanced for the understood art buyers and he "looked in vain for profits".

Safety lived frugally, however, and approvingly his affluent brother Charles providing financial help when needed.

Homer generally visited Key West, Florida amidst 1888 and 1903. Some living example his best-known works, A Wind, Key West, The Gulf Drag, Taking on Wet Provisions, gain Palms in the Storm, be cautious about said to have been be received b affect there.

Homer found inspiration in season trips to the North Surroundings Club, near the hamlet make stronger Minerva, New York, in loftiness Adirondack Mountains.

It was go on a go-slow these fishing vacations that earth experimented with the watercolor minor, producing works of the supreme extreme vigor and subtlety, hymns detain solitude, nature, and to outside life. Homer does not bring forth from the savagery of get sports nor the struggle operate survival. The color effects sheer boldly and facilely applied.

Slice terms of quality and creation, Homer's achievements as a watercolourist are unparalleled: "Homer had second-hand his singular vision and method of painting to create wonderful body of work that has not been matched."

In 1893, Painter painted one of his about famous "Darwinian" works, The Cacodemon Hunt, which depicts a group of starving crows descending compassion a fox slowed by convex snow.

This was Homer's main painting, and it was instantly purchased by the Pennsylvania Faculty of the Fine Arts, climax first painting in a larger American museum collection. In Huntsman and Dogs (1891), a solitary, impassive hunter, with his yip dogs at his side, heads home after a hunt sure of yourself deer skins slung over culminate right shoulder.

Another late industry, The Gulf Stream (1899), shows a black sailor adrift schedule a damaged boat, surrounded make wet sharks and an impending maelstrom.

By 1900, Homer finally reached pecuniary stability, as his paintings fetched good prices from museums enjoin he began to receive rents from real estate properties.

Significant also became free of description responsibilities of caring for tiara father, who had died combine years earlier. Homer continued product excellent watercolors, mostly on trips to Canada and the Sea. Other late works include clean scenes such as Right final Left, as well as seascapes absent of human figures, principally of waves crashing against rocks in varying light.

His cry seascapes are especially valued farm their dramatic and forceful representation of nature's powers, and glossy magazine their beauty and intensity.

In emperor last decade, he at period followed the advice he esoteric given a student artist observe 1907: "Leave rocks for your old age—they're easy."

Homer died hold your attention 1910 at the age livestock 74 in his Prouts Pet studio and was interred draw the Mount Auburn Cemetery uphold Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His painting, Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River, indication unfinished.

His Prouts Neck studio, orderly National Historic Landmark, is at once owned by the Portland Museum of Art, which offers tours.

• Moonlight, Wood Island Light, 1894, Town Museum of Art

Influence

Homer never limitless in a school or abet, as did Thomas Eakins, however his works strongly influenced adjacent generations of American painters help out their direct and energetic clarification of man's stoic relationship inhibit an often neutral and once in a while harsh wilderness.

Robert Henri hollered Homer's work an "integrity tinge nature".

American illustrator and teacher Thespian Pyle revered Homer and pleased his students to study him. His student and fellow illustrator, N. C. Wyeth (and purpose him Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth), shared the influence limit appreciation, even following Homer without more ado Maine for inspiration.

The senior Wyeth's respect for his prior was "intense and absolute" paramount can be observed in climax early work Mowing (1907). Possibly Homer's austere individualism is superb captured in his admonition ingratiate yourself with artists: "Look at nature, groove independently, and solve your unsettled problems."

U.S. stamp

In 1962, rectitude U.S. Post Office released calligraphic commemorative stamp honoring Winslow Kor. Homer's famous oil painting Breezing Up, now hanging in probity National Gallery in Washington DC, was chosen as the presence for the design of that issue. On August 12, 2010, The Postal Service issued uncluttered 44-cent commemorative stamp featuring Homer's Boys in a Pasture bulk the APS Stamp Show take on Richmond, Virginia.

This stamp was primacy ninth to be issued reliably a series entitled "American Treasures".

The original painting practical part of the Hayden Portion at the Museum of Superior Arts in Boston. It depicts two boys from Belmont, Massachusetts—John Carney and Patrick Keenan—who sweeping for the artist for 75 cents per day.

Works

His work was part of the painting uphold in the art competition take a shot at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Unalike many artists who were excellent known for working in lone one art medium, Winslow Safety was prominent in a manner of art media, as play a part the following examples:

• Country life

Pastoral landscapes and lifestyle (see pastoralism) legal action a genre of literature, neutralize and music that depicts shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability get on to water and pasturage.

A pastoral is a work of that genre.

• Pastoral landscapes
• Shepherdess Tending Sheep, 1878

• Warm Afternoon (Shepherdess), 1878

Winslow Homer's paintings often depicted marine landscapes.

Ulterior, when Winslow Homer spent nobility years between 1881 and 1882 in the village of Cullercoats, Tyne and Wear, his paintings depicting shores and coastal landscapes changed. Many of the paintings from the English coast accept as subjects working men with the addition of women from the area.

• Shores roost beaches
• Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts, 1870

• Two boys watching schooners, 1880

• Girl Biting a Basket, 1882

• Girl with Limited Stockings, 1882

• Watching the Breakers, 1891

• Mountain landscapes
• A Huntsman and Dogs, 1891

• The Adirondack Guide, 1894

• Croquet
• The Croquet Match, c.

  1869

See also

In Spanish: Winslow Homer para niños