WINSLOW HOMER (American Naturalist Painter)
Winslow Homer was born February 24, 1836, and began his artistic life as a magazine illustrator. He contributed to Harper's Weekly and became known for his engravings in that popular magazine. Spending a year in Paris (1856) may have coalesced his understanding of the use of light. After returning to the States, traveling to the front lines of Civil War battlefields brought his art into the present day. His first major work in oils came from the sketches he did on the front lines: "Prisoners from the Front" (1866) is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Winslow Homer is considered one of the finest American naturalist painters, and he worked in oils until 1873. At that time, he took up water colors, and worked in water color as well as oil for the rest of his life. His mid-career paintings focused on snapshots of the country—children playing, farms, and well-dressed ladies of the upper class at fashionable resorts.
Homer lived in England between 1881 and 1882. This was an important time, as he began painting seascapes at the fishing village where he stayed. Seascapes became an important part of his life's work and feature predominantly in the paintings he left behind. When he returned to the U.S., Homer wintered in the Bahamas, Cuba and Florida, spending the rest of the year in Prout's Neck, on the Maine coast. He is widely known for the seascapes he did during these years, as well as his focus on the tyranny of the sea, with "Eight Bells" (1886) becoming one of his most well-known paintings.
Winslow Homer died in Maine in 1910.
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