F R O M P O E TRY TO F I C TI O N – TH E E N G R AV E D W O R K S
EXHIBITION PACKAGE
EXHIBITION AT THE BUTLER INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN ART TO TOUR
WINSLOW HOMER FROM POETRY TO FICTION— THE ENGRAVED WORKS
240 works: includes lithographs, wood engravings, tintypes, handwritten documents, didactic wall labels, illuminated wall panels and photo murals.
Available for eight (8) or twelve (12) week booking periods.
USArt is the designated carrier for this exhibition. All shipping arrangements are booked and managed by CMPE.
PUBLICATIONS
Release Date: June 15, 2017
Book I : Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction – The Engraved Works Hardcover, 416 pages: Includes a Postscript; illuminated period photographs that relate to Homer’s work; color reproductions of paintings, watercolors, prints and drawings; 8 chapters with scholarly essays; 480 color and black and white illustrations with an interpretive, fully illustrated checklist and notes. Book I, $125.00 retail. Store discount 33% (shipped in boxes of three); 40% discount (shipped in boxes of nine)
Book II : [Illustrated Checklist with Notes] Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction – The Engraved Works Hardcover, 164 pages: Includes the same Postscript as in Book I; fully illustrated checklist with interpretive notes; Preface and 247 black and white illustrations with descriptions.
Book II, $58.00 retail. Store discount 33% (shipped in boxes of five); 40% discount (shipped in boxes of ten)
Winslow Homer – From Poetry to Fiction is one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions of Winslow Homer wood engravings ever to tour American museums. This exhibition is comprised of many never before exhibited or published rare period photographs that relate to Homer’s engravings from the early 1860s to the late 1870s. Three exceptional Homer lithographs from the Bufford print shop in Boston, c.1856-1857, are also included, as well as two handwritten documents related to the Civil War. Narrative text accompanies the exhibition with six illustrated introductory panels. Each work in the exhibition is accompanied with interpretive didactic wall labels.
The catalogue accompanying this exhibition provides a broad overview of the works of art and the history of the period. All of Homer’s wood engravings are described and interpreted in extensive detail. Several of the engraved works also include comparisons with alternative works by Homer and other artists of his time and before. The exhibition is organized into 13 subthemed areas based on Homer’s subjects that include: The Bufford Workshop Apprentice Years, Early Portraits, Leisure Time Pursuits, Rural America, The War Years, Holidays, The Sporting Life, Courtship and Romance, Seaside Views, America’s Youth, The Changing Role of Women, Urbanization and Society, and Poetry and Literature.
The Participation Fee for this exhibition includes: full value insurance coverage, press-kit information, educational materials, and 1,000 printed Gallery Guides (additional guides available at cost).
WHAT THE EXHIBITION INCLUDES Shipping Estimates and Scheduling Coordination— CMPE will obtain cost estimates and provide complete scheduling arrangements from our storage facility to the borrowing institution, as well as return arrangements. USArt is the designated carrier for this exhibition.
Subdivisions of the exhibition include:
I.
THE APPRENTICE YEARS
Twelve (12) crates
II.
EARLY PORTRAIT WORK
Ten (10) include the 240 framed works of art; two (2) crates include illustrated wall panels and explanatory text.
III.
LEISURE TIME PURSUITS
IV.
RURAL AMERICA
V.
THE WAR YEARS
Collection Two-hundred forty (240) wood engravings, three (3) lithographs, one (1) etching, two (2) handwritten documents, and twelve (12) nineteenth century tintype photographs are included. There are also eleven (11) wall panels and photo murals, plus five (5) light boxes. All prints are framed with UV-3 plexi. Tintypes are mounted in plexi vitrines ready for wall mounting.
Installation Plan and Organization CMPE will provide a detailed list of works organized into groupings based on their subject matter that will help docents and museum visitors comprehend the vast amount of works in the exhibition.
VI. HOLIDAYS VII.
THE SPORTING LIFE
VIII.
COURTSHIP AND ROMANCE
IX.
SEASIDE VIEWS
X.
AMERICA’S YOUTH
XI.
THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN
XII.
URBANIZATION AND SOCIETY
XIII.
POETRY AND LITERATURE
One thousand (1,000) printed Gallery Guides
Press-kits
Winslow Homer – From Poetry to Fiction (gallery guides) published by Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions will be included. Additional guides can be provided at cost.
Scanned images, bio and chronologies as well as special focus stories will be provided to the museum for distribution to the news media.
Published Hardcover Book
Teacher’s Manual
Includes illuminated period photographs, paintings, watercolors, prints and drawings, 8 Chapters, 480 illustrations with an interpretive, fully illustrated checklist, 416 pages.
Essay materials and student ‘in-gallery’ assignments are provided for distribution [may also be used for docent training].
[Museum Store discount 33% or up to 40% on orders of 12 or more.]
Exhibition checklist
Didactic wall labels
Box list with condition reports and insurance documents [letter form issued by AXA Art Insurance re. Willis Insurance of New York] are included.
Didactic wall labels printed and mounted on light tan beveled edge museum board total two hundred and forty (240). Additional identification labels are provided for photo murals.
For inquiries, please contact:
Contemporary & Modern Print Exhibitions
Reilly Rhodes Director and Curator
Email: info@printexhibitions.com
W I N S LO W H O M E R F R O M P O E T RY TO F I C T I O N – T H E E N G R AV E D W O R K S
F R O M P O E TRY TO F I C TI O N – TH E E N G R AV E D W O R K S I LLUM I NATED WITH PER IOD PHOTO GR APH S FULLY I LLUSTR ATED CH ECKLI ST I NCLUDI NG I NTER PR ETIVE NOTES
REILLY RHODES Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions
Permissions, Catalogue and Figure (Fig.) Numbering
IMAGE CREDITS Cover:
All works of art in this book and accompanying exhibition of the same title have corresponding numbers listed in the chapters, checklists and exhibition wall labels. Works of art illustrated in the book only are identified with a number preceded by ‘Fig.’
209. “Snap-the-Whip,” 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint Fig. 1. Country School Boys, c. 1875-1880
Works of art listed in the Color Plates are illustrated in the book only. Permission rights have been granted by lending museums and private collectors.
Tintype photo CMPE Back cover:
205. The Noon Recess, 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint Zandhoek School, c. 1914 District School No. 4, Hurley, NY Silver print Frontispiece:
Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction - The Engraved Works: Illuminated with Period Photographs First edition published by Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions Laguna Niguel, CA–USA Copyright © 2017 Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions For the text © Reilly Rhodes All rights reserved. No part of the text of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. No work of art illustrated in this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. Request for permission to copy any part of the book, other than illustrated works as stated above, should be emailed to the publisher: Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions Laguna Niguel, CA printexhibitions@cox.net
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rhodes, Reilly. Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction - The Engraved Works ISBN: 978-0-578-15050-5 1. Reilly Rhodes 2. Homer, Winslow, 1836–1910 3. Nineteenth Century American History 4. Poetry and Fiction 5. American Civil War History 6. Fine Art Prints: Wood Engravings 7. Fashion of the Nineteenth Century and Civil War Period Library of Congress Control Number 2016919194 Design: Lilla Hangay Copy Editor: Cristin Riedel Production: InnerWorkings, Ltd., San Francisco Printed in China by Artron Art Printing (HK) Ltd.
174. The Playmates, 1869, by Winslow Homer for John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “My Playmate,” illustrated in Ballads of New England, published by Fields, Osgood and Company, Boston, 1870 Wood engraving on wove Double page frontispiece:
74. Skating on the Ladies’ Skating-Pond in the Central Park, New York Published by Harper’s Weekly, January 28, 1860 Wood engraving on newsprint Opposite page: Fig. 2. Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
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CONTENTS 12 23 39 56 80 112
Prologue Introduction The American Scene Winslow Homer – Imagination & Innovation Fashion, Style & Indulgence
Civil War – The Embedded Artist - Children in War – Acts of Gallantry - Song of Innocence and Solace - Camp Life on the Yorktown Turnpike - Letters Home
145 Beginning of a New Era – Conceiving a National Art for America 173 The Disappearing One-Room Schoolhouse 221 Eyewitness to History – Vintage Photography
in the Nineteenth Century
249 Postscript 254
Endnotes
256
Acknowledgments
261
Checklist with Interpretive Notes - A Didactic Approach
- Apprentice Years / Lithographs for Sheet Music Covers - Wood Engravings / Organized by Date of Publication
386
217. Gathering Berries (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, July 11, 1874 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/16 X 13-11/16 in. (23.02 X 34.77 cm)
Color Plates: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, Photographs, Prints and Costumes from American Museums and Private Collections
392
Winslow Homer Wood Engravings Listed by Date
398
Winslow Homer Wood Engravings Listed by Subject and Theme
402
Winslow Homer Engravings with Identified Models
403
List of Prose and Poetry Books and Publications with Engravings Attributed to Winslow Homer
404
Chronology
410
Bibliography
414
CMPE Publications
415
Museum Touring Exhibitions Organized by CMPE
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PROLOGUE There have been many books and exhibitions based on the subject of Winslow Homer’s wood engravings. This one is different. This is an attempt to fully examine and interpret the graphic work of America’s most beloved artist of the nineteenth century, and to breathe life and understanding into the images that Homer so carefully and meticulously sketched for publication in the pictorial press. This review further examines how Homer transitioned from popular illustrator to painter, providing America with its own national art identity.
A
ccompanying the engravings included in this book are paintings, watercolors, historical photographs, as well as a few works by other artists. These additional works have been added to aid in the research and interpretation of Homer’s art and times. In search for supportive documentation, rare, one-of-a-kind tintype photographs have been discovered. A selection of these tintypes, none of which has ever been exhibited or previously published, has been included. The images in the tintypes are remarkably similar and in some cases identic to Homer’s subjects and models in his engravings produced between 1860 and 1875. The vintage photographs show ordinary people, some serving in the military, others as testament of an occupational vocation, and a few caught as chance subjects, such as the image on the cover of this book.
The organization of this publication and the accompanying exhibition of the same title has been enriching, thought-provoking and one of the most intensely challenging projects of my entire career. In a sense, this
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project grew out of its own calling and with its own time frame. I had no intent, when I began researching Winslow Homer engravings as early as the mid-1990s, to bring together such a comprehensive and, as I discovered, often overlooked and underrated body of work from the early development of the artist’s career. Winslow Homer (1836–1910) is regarded by many as the greatest American artist of the nineteenth century and, for some, he may also be considered the first American modernist. In light of the enormous popularity of Homer’s art during his lifetime and still today, it seems amiss that there would not be more interpretive information about him and his art. There are no biographies about Homer that give an unerring narrative of his life that might be reliably used to verify certain events and provide insight to unanswered questions. We know very little about his friendships or ties with other artists, or whom he admired and emulated. He never married and was thought to be timid and shy in the company of young women. It is assumed that his personal relationships were largely limited to his family.
29. Picnicking in the Woods (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, September 4, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/4 x 13-3/4 in. (23.45 x 34.93 cm)
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DRIVING HOME THE CORN
This New England fall farm scene shows a team of oxen pulling a loaded wagon of freshly cut stalks of corn from the field to a nearby corn shed, used to dry and cure the corn. An oxen driver leads the animals toward the open gate to one of the storage cribs.
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31. Driving Home the Corn Published by Harper’s Weekly, November 13, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 5-7/8 x 9-1/4 in. (14.92 x 23.5 cm)
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hat we do know is told through his art and for that reason, one cannot discount the importance of his early work. These engravings serve as reliable evidence of events and provide a record of Winslow Homer’s life and art. Considering what cannot be learned directly from his art, it becomes important to study the period in which he lived. Examining where he was, from Boston to New York, from apprentice to illustrator, from plein air to atelier, is helpful to understand what subjects appealed to him and why. Identifying with the historical background during the time Homer lived can, and does, give rise to many facts and clues about his work and life. It is unfortunate that much of what has been written about him becomes lost in a sea of speculation and conjecture. This study is an attempt not to fall victim to such conclusions. This study would not, however, serve history well if it were not inviting the opportunity to delve into unexplored territory when it comes to the work of Winslow Homer. Of all the artists to take a chance on writing about, Homer is certainly one of the most, if not the most, intriguing. There is more to understand and disentangle when it comes to Winslow Homer. Homer was a painter as well as illustrator of modern life who observed, recorded and interpreted events that took place around him. It takes great insight to understand the challenges of how an artist’s maturation process is developed from early to late career. Not everyone is a prodigy from start to finish and, in the case of Winslow Homer, one could not find a better example of how his art progressed from his youth to old age. There is often a value and founding in the early work of great artists that leads to the dimension of their measure in art history. In view of what has been written and said about Winslow Homer, it may seem presumptuous to attempt yet
another word on the artist. It may be bold, perhaps, to suggest that a study of his early monochromatic engravings and related paintings could produce insight into his later work. That actuality may surprise many admirers and scholars of Winslow Homer. Though there were only brief mentions about him and his graphic work in the pictorial press, exhibition reviews and miscellaneous news accounts during his lifetime, there is much to be gained by examining these records. To dismiss his early development and focus only on his work and events after 1875, as is most often the case, simply lacks foresight. Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction – The Engraved Works focuses on one-third of Homer’s artistic career. The American scene in the mid- and latenineteenth century is an important place to begin a search for answers about Winslow Homer. During this time, Homer witnessed a transition of America moving from a predominantly agricultural nation to an industrial giant on the verge of becoming a world leader in all areas of commerce, government and society. One must expect to learn that he had struggles, like all artists, and that he was affected by events, personal experiences, as well as national developments. This review of Homer’s engraved works is told in terms of historical and artistic changes that took place in Homer’s time. His exposure to and involvement with society, poetry, and literature stimulated his creative output as an artist. As a youth, Homer was not a good student and preferred to be outdoors rather than to go to school. He was largely a self-taught artist, though his mother was a watercolorist and he attended art classes for a short time in New York in his early twenties. Homer was an artist of great promise and during his lifetime, he rose to fame quickly. He was independent and, for the most part, selfreliant. His illustrations in the pictorial press brought great praise from readers as well as editors. At the same time, he
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THE COUNTRY FIDDLER Seated in the background at the right, local musicians perform while young couples dance to the calls. The dancing was plain and simple. People relied on their own dance knowledge and abilities, improvising where necessary by using the resources they had, mostly high spirits and fun. Fig. 3. Country Fiddler
Tintype, c. 1860 3-1/4 x 1-15/16 in. (8.26 x 4.92 cm)
THE DANCE AFTER THE HUSKING Rural life in New England in the mid-nineteenth century maintained its own customs and traditions for social gatherings. Farm life after the harvest meant the beginning of many social activities and the opportunity to pursue romantic relationships. In the scene, Homer documents a social gathering associated with community and harvest time work. 32. The Dance after the Husking Published by Harper’s Weekly, November 13, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 6 x 9-1/4 in. (15.24 x 23.5 cm)
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was submitting his work to public exhibitions in New York. Though he was not paid well and there remained a need to take on commissions as an illustrator, he had his eye on the future and worked toward his goal of becoming a full-time fine artist as a painter.
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n January 1864, Homer exhibited his first major oil, Sharpshooter, at the Athenaeum Club in New York. Other war-related subjects were unveiled the same year. All were dramatic and powerful works that gained immediate attention and drew interest that continues to this day. As impressive as they were, not all of Homer’s paintings were enlightening nor inspiring. In the view of Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, Associate Curator of American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1956-1966) and author of Winslow Homer—American Artist: His World and His Art, Homer did not begin to paint works that inspired until his return from France the year after he had attended the Exposition Universelle de 1867, Paris. Contrary to many opinions on Homer’s work, Gardner believed that while there did not seem to be any telling influences in Homer’s painting style or interests, he was ‘changed’ as a result of his time spent abroad.1 Gardner stated in the catalogue for the joint exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art that he believed “Homer’s trip to Paris was the most important event in his entire career as an artist.”2 Not only did Homer begin devoting more time to painting, but also the quality of his engravings began to show remarkable improvement in their mannerism and style. It was then that Homer began to merge painting ideas and engraving subjects and one became an extension of the other. By 1873, Homer was producing some of his finest wood engravings with a new focus on America’s youth.
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Today, these works, among others, can be appreciated without any in-depth background of events taking place. The addition of selected early tintype photographs in this publication and accompanying exhibition are captivating and astonishing. They also provide invaluable information and documentation of late nineteenth-century fashion and activities of those depicted in the images. Photography was a new medium in the mid-nineteenth century and the use of the tintype runs almost parallel with the dates of Homer’s career as an artist. The tintype became the most popular photography medium in America for the remainder of the century. The sheer volume of photographs taken of ordinary people has provided history a beneficial resource of information with respect to American life and culture that would not otherwise exist. These rare images energize and electrify Homer’s early works and give a deeper meaning to his graphic works. I have tried to contribute some meaningful interpretation with insight and clarification regarding the understanding of Homer’s engravings and their relationship to his work in oil and watercolor that followed his cessation of making sketches for the pictorial press. The one important thing that I have come to understand about Homer’s black and white engravings is that he did not just see these early works as monochromatic; he envisioned them as single hue prints with their extended use of shades, tones and tints. In his own words, Homer said, “It is wonderful how much depends upon the relationship of black and white. Why do you know, black and white, if properly balanced, suggests color.” Reilly Rhodes Curator
PICNICKING IN THE WOODS
This amusing scene is filled with action that one might encounter while picnicking in the woods. Children are running, playing and climbing trees. On the left, a couple is confronted by a snake on the pathway while a family gathers walnuts or chestnuts nearby. In the center of the composition, a young couple is engaged in conversation. The woman at the right holds a tray of refreshments for the children, whose lunch is set out on a blanket in the foreground.
29. Picnicking in the Woods Published by Harper’s Weekly, September 4, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/4 x 13-3/4 in. (23.45 x 34.93 cm)
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INTRODUCTION In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. —Irving Stone
Winslow Homer’s wood engravings showcase American life in an extraordinary way. Not only was Homer’s style naturalism, it was also homegrown. His work was very much about ordinary living at a unique time in American history. Homer’s occupation as an illustrator for the pictorial press started in the late 1850s and ended in 1875. It was during the Civil War that he began to alter the direction of his career from illustrator to fine artist.
F 22. The Boston Common (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, May 22, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/4 x 13-15/16 in. (23.5 x 35.4 cm)
or most of Homer’s lifetime, the Hudson River School was celebrated and extolled for its pastoral landscape paintings. The movement was intended to reflect an aesthetic vision of the American landscape and was influenced by romanticism that originated in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century. The name of the movement in America was derived from the Hudson River Valley and its surrounding areas, including the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, as well as the White Mountains, all locations that Homer would visit and paint decades later. Though Homer was drawn to understanding the landscape and painting techniques of the Hudson River School artists, he remained independent of their influence, clinging to his uniquely American style of art.1 In the late 1870s and 1880s, Homer’s art was, to varying degrees, categorized by some critics and historians as being part of the American Barbizon School, the movement that followed the Hudson River School. The
Barbizon movement originated in France in the early nineteenth century and its artists sought to paint directly from nature. Prior to that time, painters only idealized nature, as inspired by ancient poetry, not actually working as plein air painters. The American Barbizon School recognized the value of working plein air as the French classical painter Nicolas Poussin had done in the seventeenth century. Though, unlike Poussin’s leitmotifs and mythography, their focus was seeking not only direct contact with the indigenous character of the landscape, but also a setting of natural light.2 Artists associated with the American Barbizon School included George Inness, Thomas Eakins, William Morris Hunt, William Keith and Childe Hassam. Homer, however, was never part of any school of art. He was largely self-taught and inspired by his own thinking. His career as a painter was not rushed and, although he observed the work of others, he seemed to have had an understanding of what was required to
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make a work of fine art. Homer recognized the value and importance of creating art that was imaginative, aesthetic and intellectual in its content. Many of his wood engravings illustrated for the pictorial press achieved this high standard. In this book, some of Homer’s engravings have been juxtaposed with the works of other artists to promulgate the divergence in their works. Homer’s engravings are of extremely high quality and proven to be collectable by museums, historians and art connoisseurs.
CORTEZ HIMES Calvin Cortez Himes was the son of Charles H. Himes and Mary McCanna, both originally from Rutland County, Vermont. He was the brother of Charles H. Himes, Jr., a veteran of the Civil War. Calvin Himes’ occupation is listed as a publisher and he is thought to have lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the tintype, Mr. Himes wears a top hat, a common accessory of the upper class during the 1850s.
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omer’s diverse subjects and inclination to depict events factually make his wood engravings an invaluable historical resource. New England Factory Life—“Bell-Time,” 1868, Summer in the Country, 1869, Waiting for Calls on New-Year’s Day, 1869, The Picnic Excursion, 1869, Spring Farm Work—Grafting, 1870, Lumbering in Winter, 1871, and The Noon Recess, 1873, reveal what life was like in the post-Civil War era.
Fig. 5. Portrait of Calvin Cortez Himes
Tintype, c. 1860 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 in. (8.89 x 6.35 cm) CMPE
After witnessing the devastation of war as an embedded artist, Homer took an extended leave to visit Europe. When he returned to America in 1868, he began illustrating scenes that expressed a new hope for the future of America through the depictions of children. His engravings for the children’s publication Our Young Folks began to show children at leisure, but often fewer in number and sometimes alone (Green Apples, The Bird-Catchers and Watching the Crows). It becomes clear that Homer was not witnessing the same America as before the war. Homer’s illustrations captured and recorded the events of the day, how people reacted to new trends and fads, and what their daily lives were like among the segment of society with which he began to associate— America’s affluent and wealthy. Some examples of high fashion were white ruffled dresses worn by young women as seen in The Beach at Long Branch, 1869, and On the Bluff at Long Branch, at the Bathing Hour, 1870. Many of the engravings from his early Boston period also showed Continued on p. 30 Fig. 6. Boston Common, c. 1920
Glass negative, Shorpy Historic Images
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THE BOSTON COMMON The introduction of municipal parkland projects in many major cities provided amenities to enhance social and family life. The city of Boston was able to preserve much of the natural terrain in the Boston Common. Fountains, walkways and a promenade that surrounded the fashionable neighborhood attracted people of all walks of life. Many of Boston’s upper- and middle-class residents made use of the park where children played, mothers and nannies visited and socialized, and families shared intimate moments.
22. The Boston Common Published by Harper’s Weekly, May 22, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/4 x 13-15/16 in. (23.5 x 35.4 cm)
Homer presents an everyday scene of activity at the Common: adults are engaged in conversation or relaxing on park benches, a game of ring toss is being played by two young girls on the left, and a young boy, on the far right, is enjoying nature while fascinated with a squirrel climbing a tree.
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THE MATCH BETWEEN THE SOPHS AND FRESHMEN Nearly all of the students at Harvard College lived on campus. There were nine river houses located south of Harvard Yard between the Yard and the Charles River near Harvard Square. Student groups included fraternities, sororities and social clubs. Harvard College organizations focused on campus publications, such as The Harvard Crimson. Plus, academic and athletic activities, political councils and clubs, and music and theater groups were in abundance. Edward Thomas Damon, son of Thomas Jefferson and Rachel (Thomas) Damon, was born in Wayland, MA, on April 19, 1835. Damon died November 30, 1859, of smallpox, which he contracted while visiting Rainsford-Island Hospital in Boston Harbor.
Fig. 7. Cambridge Student
Edward Thomas Damon, c. 1857 Tintype 3-1/8 x 2-11/16 in. (7.94 x 6.83 cm) Private collection
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Fig. 8. Cambridge Student Samuel Dorr, Esq., 1857 Tintype 3-5/8 x 2-3/8 in. (9.21 x 6.03 cm) Private collection
Samuel Dorr, son of Samuel Fox and Elizabeth Chipman (Hazen) Dorr, was born in New York on June 11, 1836. He began the study of law in the office of the Hon. Francis O. Watts on October 1, 1857, making Boston his home. In the years that followed, he was admitted to practice at the Suffolk Bar and began to travel extensively throughout Europe. He then returned to set up a law practice in New York. A “Report of the Class of 1857 in Harvard College” was compiled and published nine years after graduation. Many of the students pursued additional education in the fields of medicine and law, some engaged in business ventures or volunteered for military duty during the war years (both North and South), and others became ministers, teachers and school administrators.
Some traveled throughout the world to Europe, the Middle East, India, Russia and Asia. A few had died early from typhoid, cholera or from injuries in the Civil War. For the majority, they had settled into careers and family life and began making a contribution to society and the communities where they lived. In some of his earliest wood engravings, Homer created two scenes that depict campus life at Harvard: The Match Between the Sophs and Freshmen—The Opening, 1857, and Class Day, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass, 1858.
6. The Match Between the Sophs and Freshmen—The Opening Published by Harper’s Weekly, August 1, 1857 Wood engraving on newsprint 6 x 21-1/2 in. (15.24 x 54.61 cm)
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REPORT ON THE CLASS OF 1857 THORNDIKE DELAND HODGES He began the study of law at the Law School in Cambridge immediately after graduating, and remained there for one year; he then continued studying at Salem, remaining there until the following June. Shortly after, he established himself in the practice of his profession at Haverhill, Massachusetts. In August 1862, he enlisted as a private in Company F, Thirty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers, and was appointed sergeant shortly afterward. In April 1863, he was promoted to captain in the First North Carolina Volunteers, afterwards known as the Thirty-fifth United States Colored Troops. He was in active service in Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Florida. In January 1866, he was honorably discharged, and on April 27th, opened an office in Boston for the practice of law.
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STANTON BLAKE Soon after graduating, he went to Europe, and entered the banking-house of George Peabody. He returned in 1858 and entered the house of Blake Brothers & Co., bankers and brokers, in Boston. In 1859, Blake again went to England, returning early in 1860. In April 1860, he began the banking business in New York, in connection with the Boston firm. In June 1862, he again went to England, and returned in September of the same year. JAMES AMORY PERKINS Determined on entering the mercantile profession, and with this objective in mind, Perkins sailed for Calcutta in July 1857, where he remained for several months, inquiring into all things relating to the business he had chosen for his future life. He returned by way of Europe, spending some months traveling on the continent, and reaching home in June 1859. He entered his father’s counting-room and, in the spring of 1861, became a partner in the house.
Four vignettes: 6-a–d. Freshmen, Sophs, Juniors, Seniors Each measuring 7 x 5 in. (17.78 x 12.7 cm)
JOSEPH MAY At the time of graduation, May was at a water cure on Lake Skaneateles, near Syracuse, N.Y., endeavoring to revive his system, prostrated by a severe attack of illness in the middle of his senior year. In March 1858, he went to New York to join his brother on a European tour. In early April, they sailed for eight weeks on the merchant ship W.S. Lindsay, arriving in Venice, their port of destination. May spent some time in Switzerland, then passed through Bavaria, down the Rhine to Paris and London, and then home. In the fall of 1862, he entered the Divinity School and graduated in 1865. He began preaching at Yonkers, N.Y., and was invited to settle there. He was ordained in the ministry and installed as pastor of Hope Church. At the time of the report, he was engaged to Harriet Charles Johnson, daughter of the late Philip Johnson of Washington, D.C.
WILLIAM REED BULLARD Immediately after graduating, he went to Indianapolis, Indiana, and entered upon the study of medicine in the office of his uncle, a successful practitioner in that city. Bullard spent two winters in Boston, attending medical lectures at the Massachusetts Medical College, and on March 7, 1860, took a degree of M.D. In 1865, he was studying the subject of cholera and its possible spread to Indianapolis. SAMUEL BRECK PARKMAN After graduation, he read law in Savannah and was admitted to practice in due time. He became a member of the Georgia Historical Society and soon after joined the Savannah troop of cavalry. In the summer of 1860, he was in Europe and spent some time in Switzerland on business. In December 1860, he married Miss Nannie Bierne, a wealthy lady of Virginia. The account of his service in the War of the Rebellion is somewhat indefinite. He entered the service of the Confederate States as a first lieutenant in Read’s Georgia Battery, and he was reported as such at the time of his death, killed at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862.
INTRODUCTION
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THE AMERICAN SCENE The 1860s and 1870s was a time of artistic experimentation for Winslow Homer. He found his subjects in popular seaside resorts of Massachusetts and New Jersey, in the Adirondack woods and Catskill Mountains in rural New York State, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Homer’s lively depictions of Americans at leisure and children at play were regular themes for the artist. He drew praise and admiration from the general public, and eventually the critics.
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merican art at the beginning of the nineteenth century was just finding its way. Life for nearly all New Englanders centered on family and community, with little or no concern for broadening their reach. Most were farmers who worked, played, learned and worshipped at home. Sophisticated taste for aesthetic pleasures were few outside of major urban centers, such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Much of the art that did exist had strong influences from Ireland, England and Continental Europe where many immigrants and settlers had originated.
207. The Nooning, 1873 (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, August 16, 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/16 x 13-3/4 in. (23.02 x 34.93 cm)
In the years that followed the war, especially in the North, it became a period of unparalleled prosperity. More Americans were beginning to move from rural farmlands to the urban environment of the cities. With newfound wealth in almost every sector of employment and occupation, people enjoyed and engaged in social and cultural enrichments, such as attending music halls and
theater performances, visiting libraries and museums, as well as buying art. For many of the privileged class, there were private schools and centers of influence that made up much of their daily lives and activities. Technological innovations and new inventions gave rise to a new standard of living. Fashion and social events were becoming an important part of mid- and late-nineteenth century life. People had more free time to enjoy outings at country clubs and vacations at mountain or seaside resorts. Horse racing at Saratoga and Monmouth Park became popular during that time. In their idle hours, Americans picnicked in the parks, played croquet, golf and tennis, or simply relaxed, reading novels and poetry. Home construction was on the rise and people were relishing in the luxury of their own landscaped gardens and lawns. Winslow Homer was at the forefront of this new growth in America. He had his finger on the pulse of what was happening in the country, and it was reflected in his art.
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W
hen Homer was born in 1836, the Hudson River School had already been established. Thomas Cole, who founded the movement in the 1820s, and his followers were all trained in Europe. Their primary influence was the Romantic Movement in England, led by painters J.M.W. Turner and John Martin.1 Artists who wished to realize their aspirations as painters or sculptors went to study in Rome, London or Düsseldorf where they could pursue more expansive ideas and receive formal training. Prior to the nineteenth century, the pinnacle for painters in America was largely limited to portrait work. Landscape art was just beginning to be recognized and appreciated by Americans who had come into a position of wealth. Many of those who bought or commissioned art based their selectivity on European tastes. Hudson River School subject matter was popular in the mid-century with its patriotic spirit that focused on the American landscape. True American art without influences from abroad had not yet been forged and would not be established until the post-Civil War years. There is no preamble to define the precise moment when ‘true’ American art began. Winslow Homer, however, is thought to be one of a handful of artists to have avoided foreign influences and training. Joshua C. Taylor, the director of the National Collection of Fine Art at the Smithsonian Institution (19701981) and American art historian, wrote about a crisis in American art that came to a head in the 1860s.2 The crisis involved finding a national art form for America that supported the nation’s character and composition. The controversy focused on artists personalizing their work by injecting emotion and feeling into the art. Those who did not agree with that premise wanted to simply record nature as God had created it, without any embellishment or attempt to alter or modify nature. The idea of a national art form was to be found not in the artist, but in the subject that the artist rendered so true to nature.
In his poem, “Thanatopsis,” American poet William Cullen Bryant’s words resonate with the literary and visual arts of writers and painters who focused on nature in the early nineteenth century.3 “To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile— Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature’s teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— Comes a still voice—” Bryant’s poem was an attempt to express insight and understanding of nature’s extraordinary ability to mitigate sadness, grieving and suffering. The poet suggests that nature can make pain less agonizing. He tells us that, when we begin to worry about death, we should go out, listen and commune with nature. It is the beauty, wonder and peacefulness found in nature that we should seek out in life, and reap its benefits. Although Bryant was not referring to painting, he saw in the Hudson River School a movement that conveyed a superior knowledge and understanding of nature’s benefits through fine art. The artists were mindful of nature’s ability to make one forget their sorrows and to reflect on nature’s beauty. Bryant took a keen interest in the Hudson River School artists and became a patron and long-time friend of the founder, Thomas Cole. Years later, Bryant, in his eulogy for Cole to members of the National Academy of Design, evoked the words of the Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott: “Call it not vain they do not err Who say, that when the poet dies, Mute nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies.”4 Continued on p. 46
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WAITING FOR A BITE
Homer’s most comprehensive work came about in the late 1860s and early 1870s. He began to take into consideration what subjects would make good paintings, not just good illustrations. Sharpshooter, 1863, and The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, are examples of works that he produced both as paintings and engravings. By 1870, he began focusing his attention on children and nature. Fishing was a favorite subject where he was able to capture the isolation and solitude of his subjects, and focus on developing his skill with watercolor as a medium of choice. In making the watercolor Waiting for a Bite [Why Don’t the Suckers Bite?] while he was on vacation in the Adirondacks in the summer of 1874, he discovered the propitious process of
various changes or stages from watercolor to oil to engraving. The final composition in his wood engraving, Waiting for a Bite, remained nearly the same as his first composition, but with changes made to the landscape. In his oil painting, Waiting for a Bite, 1874 (Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens), he eliminated two of the boys, leaving the boy holding a fishing pole isolated in a desolate atmosphere of a near barren landscape. His final work, the wood engraving published in Harper’s Weekly, August 22, 1874, includes all three boys in a landscape that is fertile and lush. The treatment and reworking of this subject strongly demonstrates how wood engraving contributed to Homer’s early development as a painter.
219. Waiting for a Bite Published by Harper’s Weekly, August 22, 1874 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-3/32 x 13-3/4 in. (23.1 x 34.93 cm)
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A BARBIZON SUBJECT REINVENTED The oil painting by Homer titled The Return of the Gleaner, 1867, shows a female farm worker with a pitchfork in hand. She looks across the landscape, possibly to gauge the severity of a coming storm, or to assess the amount of work ahead for stacking the cut grain into shocks. Historically, gleaners were known to be French farm laborers after the French Revolution. They were workers who gathered leftover grain after the harvest and were generally considered to be among the poorer or lower class of French society. JeanFrançois Millet’s painting, The Gleaners, 1857, was criticized by the French establishment as being a glorified view of the French working class. Homer first observed gleaners working at the Cernay-la-Ville farm in Picardy, when he visited in 1867. Later, in creating his wood engraving, The Last Load, 1869, he incorporated the subject of his painting The Return of the Gleaner, 1867. However, unlike Millet’s depiction of the workers, Homer’s engraving does not suggest lower class society, but instead builds on a common ground of hard-working American families striving for a future that is both productive and prosperous.
Fig. 11. The Return of the Gleaner, 1867 Oil on canvas 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm) Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Bentonville, Arkansas Photography by Edward C. Robison III
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THE LAST LOAD The engraving shows a farm worker with a scythe standing in a pasture with two women nearby. One holds a pitchfork that rests on her right shoulder as she looks into the distance. She maintains the same pose and appearance as the female field worker in Homer’s painting The Return of the Gleaner, 1867 (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), that he painted while traveling in France a year earlier. The second woman in the engraving holds a straw hat. She has likely come out to the fields to see the progress as the last load for the season is being completed. The farm worker holding the scythe looks similar in stature and appearance to the arborist seen in Spring Farm Work—Grafting, 1870, published by Harper’s Weekly.
168. The Last Load Published by Appleton’s Journal, August 7, 1869 Wood engraving on newsprint 4-1/2 x 6-1/2 in. (11.43 x 16.51 cm)
SUMMER HAY At day’s end, the smell of warm summer hay is in the air throughout most of New England. Farm workers know that their day is nowhere near over before sundown. There is the wagon to unload, and yet another to fill. There will be more work tomorrow.
Fig. 12. Summer Hay, c. 1880 Carte-de-visite (CDV) 3-3/4 x 4-13/16 in. (9.53 x 12.22 cm) CMPE
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DUTCH HAY BARRACK The Dutch colonists that settled in the Hudson River Valley farmed their land much like they had done in Holland since the seventeenth century. They used the same practices in crop-raising, harvesting and in the storage of fodder. Fig. 14. Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn
(Dutch, 1606-1669) Landscape with a Cottage and Haybarn [Cottage and Hay Barrack], 1641 Etching and drypoint 5-1/4 x 12-13/16 in. (13.34 x 32.54 cm) Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Mary and Oliver Langenberg in memory of Alice M. and Harry H. Langenberg 37:1997
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ryant expanded with his own thoughts: “This is said of the poet; but the landscape painter is admitted to a closer familiarity with nature than the poet. He studies her aspect more minutely and watches with a more affectionate attention its varied expressions. Not one of her forms is lost upon him; not a gleam of sunshine penetrates her green; recesses; not a cloud casts its shadow unobserved by him; every tint of the morning or the evening, of the gray or the golden noon, of the near or the remote object is noted by his eye and copied by his pencil. All her boundless variety of outlines and shades become almost a part of his being and are blended with his mind.”5 The Hudson River School movement lasted until 1880. However, several of the painters associated with the movement remained active and popular with the public until the end of the century, almost the entire life span of Winslow Homer. To many scholars and historians, the Hudson River School was America’s first true artistic fraternity. The Realist Movement offered the modern viewer scenes that appeared as convincing observations of nature and human behavior. The American realist painters focused on art that was deeply personal, emotional and
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conveyed a visual vocabulary that expressed humanistic feelings and activities. The subject matter of the realist was fixated on ordinary activity that existed in the world of normal experience.6 The art critic, James Jackson Jarves (1818-1888), had little tolerance for what he considered “mindless copying of nature.”7 He felt the question of forging a national art could not be established simply by copying nature. In his view, the art needed to be culturally independent, expressing an ideology that involved distinctive characteristics of place. Homer, together with other artists, poets and writers, began taking an interest in the Realist ideas of avoiding the ‘ideal’ and concentrating on the ‘ordinary’ realities of life. While world governments were struggling to survive, America was expanding and new ideas and changes were emerging. Homer observed that many of these transformations affected the masses, including informed readers of the pictorial press. By the 1860s, America was experiencing its own problems. The American Civil War brought great risks in maintaining the unification of the nation. The voice of poets, such as Walt Whitman, beckoned solace and healing to the American people. It was also during this period that a new demeanor for American writers and artists began to move forward.
FARMING AND ARBORICULTURE Judging from the shape of the branches and the height of the tree, the farm worker is grafting an apple tree to encourage fruit growth as he attaches a section of a stem with leaf buds, inserting it into the stock of the tree. The upper part of the graft (the scion) becomes the top of the plant; the lower portion (the understock) becomes the root system or part of the trunk. Grafting is done in the spring of the year when leaf buds appear, showing new growth. The farm yard in the background reveals a Dutch hay barrack and haycock consisting of loose hay stacked around a central pole, supported by side poles. This system was used in Northern Europe as early as medieval times. It is likely that the location for Homer’s engraved scene is near Hurley, New York, where he spent much of his time in the rural farm areas settled by Dutch colonists as early as the seventeenth century. Apple trees still grow in the area today and apple connoisseurs consider the fruit to taste better because of where they’re grown – in the shadow of New York’s Catskill Mountains, away from the hotter, humid areas of the Hudson Valley.
178. Spring Farm Work— Grafting Published by Harper’s Weekly, April 30, 1870 Wood engraving on newsprint 6-7/8 x 9-1/8 in. (17.46 x 23.18 cm)
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HANDS-ON CHORES Children in the nineteenth century were an integral part of the family and community. Hands-on chores taught responsibility, duty and selfworth. Churning butter, gathering berries and chestnuts, collecting eggs, washing clothes, and performing a variety of farm related chores were all part of daily life.
150. The Strawberry Bed Our Young Folks Published by Ticknor and Fields, Boston, July 1868 Wood engraving on wove 3-11/16 x 5-15/16 in. (9.37 x 15.08 cm)
Oliver Stone and Eastman Johnson nominated him as a member to the Century Club of New York.11 His works were exhibited at the Union League Club, the Brooklyn Art Association, the Century Club and the National Academy of Design, followed by a touring exhibition at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts. Several newspapers, including the New York Evening Mail, The Nation, New York Evening Post, The Round Table and New York World, began to follow Homer’s activities and the work that he was doing while in New York. For most, interpretation of a work of art is not necessary to ‘like what they can already see.’ But, once a definitive narrative is provided, there is an increased desire to learn more about the man and his work in terms of
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experiences and circumstances that pressed him to respond in such an extraordinary way. Few artists of the period benefited from the popularity of their work that had been published in the pictorial press as did Homer. His subjects weren’t focused on the open vistas of the American landscape or the struggles of society, short of his depiction of negro life during the Reconstruction period following the war, but even that was a uniquely American story to tell. His schoolhouse series, rural farm scenes, and images of children fishing or playing in seaside settings were all part of Homer’s unique American genre. His engravings of this period were focused on the virtues of the American character and emblematic narratives of everyday life that gave him his genre and laid the groundwork for his career as a painter.
THE CRANBERRY HARVEST, ISLAND OF NANTUCKET
In 1880, Eastman Johnson drew inspiration from rural farm life in New England. The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket depicts a community of people, young and old, working together to harvest a field. Many of Johnson’s themes were the same as those that appealed to Winslow Homer. At nearly the same time, both artists found similar subjects of children at play in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Johnson’s famous painting of children imagining an adventure while playing on an abandoned stagecoach in Old Stagecoach (Fig. 23, p. 69), 1871, (Milwaukee Art Museum) is reminiscent of Homer’s lively depiction of school boys playing Crack the Whip in Snap the Whip, 1872.
Fig. 15. Eastman Johnson
(American, 1824-1906) The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, 1880 Oil on canvas 27-3/8 x 54-1/2 in. (69.5 x 138.4 cm) Timken Museum of Art, San Diego Putnam Foundation Collection
Between 1875 and 1880, Johnson made a series of sketches and oil paintings of cranberry pickers. The subject of Americans picking berries in the fields or making maple sugar became immensely popular with American painters. Johnson may have seen Homer’s published engraving Gathering Berries in the July 1874 issue of Harper’s Weekly. The lone figure of a woman standing among the berry pickers is dominate in Johnson’s painting The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, 1880, and draws strong similarities to the lone girl standing at the far right next to a rock in Gathering Berries. The power of the compositions in both paintings is undeniably strong and comparatively alike.
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STRAWBERRY PICKING NEAR THE SHORELINE Historians often attribute the date of Homer’s first works in the medium of watercolor to the summer of 1873, when he spent several months at the beach resort in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Actually, by that time, Homer was already a highly accomplished watercolorist and had made several important works using the medium as early as 1860. It is not known when he first began to paint with watercolor, but it is highly likely that he used the medium as a youth under the tutelage of his mother, who was an amateur watercolorist. In 1873, Homer created a series of related watercolors using the subjects that he found in Gloucester Harbor. Homer’s Gloucester watercolors were the first to show a transcendent quality with the use of the medium that had not been seen before in his earlier works. Some of his most admired watercolors from this series include Gloucester Harbor, A Clam-bake, and Berry Pickers. The wood engraving Gathering Berries, published by Harper’s Weekly in 1874, was derived from his watercolor Berry Pickers.
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217. Gathering Berries Published by Harper’s Weekly, July 11, 1874 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/8 x 13-1/2 in. (23.18 x 34.29 cm)
GIRL IN A HOMESPUN DRESS The girl wearing a checkered pattern dress and the boy with long sleeves and vest bear a resemblance to the girl wearing a homespun dress and the boy picking berries in the engraving Gathering Berries, 1874. Homespun dresses were frequently worn by young girls whose images appear in nineteenth century tintype photographs. The subject matter documents what had been called the ‘patriotic dress,’ worn by women and young girls, mostly in the South. There is even a song written by Carrie Belle Sinclair titled “The Homespun Dress.” The song is a sentimental Southern poem honoring Confederate women who had to sew their own clothes during the wartime blockade. “The homespun dress is plain, I know, My hat’s palmetto, too; But then it shows what Southern girls For Southern rights will do.” In the North, the homespun dress was also considered a patriotic symbol, mainly in protest of high taxes on European fabrics and textile imports. The dress was a simple design of red, white and blue plaid; it was easy to construct and the weave was similar to the popular Alamance Plaids, one of the signature fabrics produced by Alamance Cotton Mill in Alamance County, North Carolina.
BOY DRESSED IN A LONG SLEEVE SHIRT AND VEST In the early nineteenth century, it was common for children to wear hand-me-down clothes. Rural children often worked on farms and dressed in clothing that suited their role, yet offered warmth in cool weather and comfort in hot summer months. Vests or light jackets were likely choices that might allow them to layer their clothing.
Fig.16-17. Berry Pickers Both: Tintype, c. 1860
1/16th plate 2-1/4 x 1-5/8 in. (5.72 x 4.13 cm) CMPE
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THE DISAPPEARING ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE In the early 1870s, one-room country schools were considered old-fashioned and rapidly becoming obsolete. Homer had an eye for humanizing details and was seeking a way of capturing the essence of what was American in the emergence of the country’s youth. Snap the Whip was a stroke of genius and accorded Homer his ‘grand achievement’ early in his career as a painter and forged a national identity for American art.
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hen Winslow Homer painted Snap the Whip in 1872, he depicted a small group of children playing a game of physical endurance on a school playground in Ulster County, New York, and already knew that the one-room country school was becoming a thing of the past. The location of Homer’s schoolhouse has been a mystery to historians and scholars for almost a century and a half. In 1985, The Metropolitan Museum of Art published American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume II, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1816 and 1845. The documentation provided for Snap the Whip discusses the painting owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and compares it to a larger painting
of the same title, owned by The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. As to the location of Homer’s subject, the review includes the following: “The site represented in Snap the Whip has not been identified. W.J. Whittemore’s ‘Memorandum of a conversation with Bruce Crane, N.A. at the Salmagundi Club, November 17, 1933’ (Long Island Collection of the East Hampton Library) states that Homer painted Snap the Whip in East Hampton. In a note, dated January 1937, Whittemore adds that Crane did not see Homer paint Snap the Whip but the boys who had posed for it told him about it subsequently. Others have suggested that the work was inspired by Homer’s visits to Hurley, New York.”1
209. “Snap-the-Whip” (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, September 20, 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-5/8 x 20-5/8 in. (34.5 x 52.3 cm)
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“They will hand down to posterity pictures of Americans of the nineteenth century, possessing an individuality and marked by the strong idiosyncrasies of our people, not found elsewhere in the whole range of art.”
—unidentified reviewer for the New York Herald, 1872.
Winslow Homer produced a series of works related to children, mostly young boys between the ages of eight to twelve. These images tell a story of rural America, a genre that Homer seemed to favor over boys who lived in city neighborhoods of New York. The country boys projected an innocence and wonder that told America that their kind of experiences would help develop them into young men with homegrown values that the future of this nation needed—a sort of perspective that people have when they use the term ‘Midwestern values’ to describe one’s character. This implies that the country boy might benefit from being reared in the open land, away from city life and its influences, where nature might have a profound effect on one’s thinking and character. Homer was not alone in his thinking or his choices of subject matter. There were other artists drawn to the ‘country boy’ image in the years between the Civil War and the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. Eastman Johnson quickly comes to mind with a series of New England farm scenes that include boys at work and play, particularly on Nantucket Island. Homer captured the eye of the critics in such works as Taking Sunflower to Teacher, The Bird-Catchers, Swinging on a Birch-Tree, The Nooning, Waiting for a Bite, and “Snap-the-Whip.”
209. “Snap-the-Whip” Published by Harper’s Weekly, September 20, 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-5/8 x 20-5/8 in. (34.61 x 52.39 cm)
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SNAP THE WHIP This painting is thought to be a study for the larger version of Snap the Whip. It may well have been, but it is much more than that. An infrared study revealed that Homer originally included a view of the mountain and two boys standing near the back wall of the schoolhouse. He later took out the images of the two boys and replaced the mountain view with a landscape looking toward the village of Hurley, revealing the spire of the Hurley Reformed Church. Today, from this vantage point, the village and church spire have been obscured by foliage. Homer had to turn around to look in the opposite direction of the schoolhouse in order to capture the landscape he painted in Snap the Whip. Provenance: Unidentified owner (sold by Clarke’s Art Rooms, New York, January 28, 1915, No. 26 for $275); Ex Collection of Christian A. Zabriskie, New York. Gift of Christian A. Zabriskie, 1950 [Accession No. 50.41]
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Fig. 69. Snap the Whip, 1872 Oil on canvas 12 x 20 in. (30.48 x 50.8 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Gift of Christian A. Zabriskie, 1950
SNAP THE WHIP This iconic painting is one of Winslow Homer’s most reproduced and written about works in American art. Homer’s Snap the Whip is an early masterpiece. It helped forge a national art for America. With emphasis on the post-Civil War era, the nation was looking to its youth for impending leadership and direction. The painting was exhibited at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition in the fall of 1874, the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1878. Joseph Butler, Jr. purchased the work for The Butler Institute of American Art in 1918. Homer did a spectacular engraving titled “Snap-the-Whip,” published as a double-page spread by Harper’s Weekly in September 1873. It continues today to be Homer’s most popular and successful wood engraving.
Fig. 70. Snap the Whip, 1872
Oil on canvas 22 x 36 in. (55.88 x 91.44 cm) The Butler Institute of American Art Youngstown, Ohio
Provenance: John Sherwood (1873) to Parke Godwin (1879) to George A. Leavitt (1879) to Richard H. Ewart (1911) to William Macbeth (1918) to Joseph Butler, Jr. (1918). Gift to The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
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HURLEY REFORMED CHURCH In the spring of 1854, the Hurley Reformed Church was constructed, replacing the old stone Dutch Reformed Church. The church is located at the north end of Main Street where it can be seen from multiple vantage points near the village. The photo of Hurley Reformed Church shows a horse and buggy traveling north on Main Street in the direction of the Bridge Hotel (now the Hurley Mountain Inn), where it is believed that Homer may have stayed during some of his visits to Hurley.
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Fig. 71. Unidentified photographer Hurley Reformed Church, c. 1870-1880 Albumen silver print Office of the Town Historian, Hurley, New York
VIEW OF HURLEY VILLAGE The spire of Hurley Reformed Church can be seen from a high altitude. The trees and foliage now impede the ground view that Homer was able to see from the school property on Hurley Mountain Road in the 1870s.
Fig. 72. Michael Nelson, Photographer Aerial View of Hurley Reformed Church Spire, Hurley, NY, 2015 © CMPE
Wynkoop Road, seen at the right, crosses Esopus Creek near Hurley village and connects with Hurley Mountain Road (obscured) in the foreground. The one-room schoolhouse where Homer painted Snap the Whip is located just below the hovering drone used to take this photograph in September 2015. Fig. 73. Michael Nelson, Photographer
Aerial View of Hurley Village, NY, from Hurley Mountain , 2015 © CMPE
STATEMENT BY DRONE PHOTOGRAPHER MICHAEL NELSON The landscape view between Hurley and the location of the schoolhouse property at the base of Hurley Mountain has been obscured due to nearly a century and a half of tree growth. The challenge to prove the location that Winslow Homer saw from the schoolhouse site was resolved as described below: “Today, you cannot see the spire from the property on the ground, but one can see it from the air. And this would be true of the Esopus Creek below the village as well, that runs between the town of Hurley and Hurley Mountain. The photo of the church and the schoolhouse could be achieved at a very high altitude. And lastly, looking at the painting, I see that it was painted in the sun at 8:30 in the morning, judging from the shadows of the boys and the position of the house to the sun at the time. The skies, on the other hand, suggest 6:00 in the late-late afternoon.” – Michael Nelson, Drone Photographer, September 14, 2015 [Mr. Nelson has worked as a professional photographer for The New York Times, American Airlines, and the cosmetic and fashion industries. His home is in Saugerties, New York, in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.]
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COUNTRY SCHOOLTEACHER The Country School, Country School and The Noon Recess (both the painting and wood engraving) all have one thing in common. They are interior views of what seems to be the one-room schoolhouse that is depicted in Snap the Whip. Or are they? Certainly the schoolroom activity is the same, but the room itself does not seem to fit the simple exterior construction of the schoolhouse seen in Snap the Whip. It is the interior view of the ceiling detail that seems out of place and somewhat haunting. Of the four works mentioned, The Noon Recess seems the most correlated in terms of architectural design. Looking through the window in The Noon Recess, children can be seen playing on the playground, with the exception of one child. A boy sitting on a bench inside the classroom appears to be taking a reading lesson from a somewhat disenchanted schoolteacher who gazes out the window away from the student and the children on the playground. Young women, sometimes just nineteen or twenty years of age, were employed as ‘schoolmarms’ or ‘schoolmistresses.’ Many of these young women lived with families in local villages or communities. They worked for their keep helping with household chores, such as cleaning and meal preparation. Some communities organized a rotating tenant system for attracting schoolteachers. Fig. 84 . Unidentified photographer
Country Schoolteacher, c. 1870 Tintype 7/8 x 3/4 in. (2.22 x 1.91 cm) CMPE
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Fig. 83. Country School, c. 1871-1873
Oil on canvas 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm) Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy Andover, Massachusetts
205. The Noon Recess Published by Harper’s Weekly, June 28, 1873 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/16 x 13-11/16 in. (23.02 x 34.77 cm)
THE NOON RECESS Through the interior window of the schoolhouse, the game Crack the Whip is being played on the schoolyard. The interior of the classroom seems more fitting to the architectural style of the schoolhouse exterior seen in Snap the Whip. The Noon Recess does not include the ceiling detail. It does, however, show details that are not seen in the paintings, including a map of the Western Hemisphere displayed on the wall behind the teacher and the writing on the chalkboard, with Homer’s initials ‘WH.’
INTERIOR OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL
Fig. 85. W.H. Sanford, photographer
South Farms District School No. 6, Morris, CT Scan from a print (made from a glass plate negative), c. 1910-1920 White Memorial Foundation, Litchfield, CT
This photo, from the archives of the White Memorial Foundation, Litchfield, CT, shows the interior of a one-room school that originally served the South Farms region of Morris, CT, from 1772 to 1914. The schoolhouse resembles the one-room school that Homer depicted in the wood engraving, The Noon Recess, 1873, as well as in two oil paintings from 1871-1873. Although there are differences, such as the more modest ceiling treatment in the Morris schoolhouse, the room and furnishings are similar to the schoolhouse depicted in Homer’s school series. After the Morris school relocated in 1910 to a property next to a cider mill, it became more commonly known as The Mill School.
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on the school bench to view the room and the teacher. By the mid-1870s, this style of classroom arrangement with benches and writing tables that faced the walls would have been in the process of change. By the early 1880s, students would sit at desks with chairs that had backs. All of the desks would face the front of the classroom, boys sitting on one side and girls on the other. A diagram of the classroom layout for the Zandhoek School in Hurley [District School No. 4, Hurley] suggests that the individual or dual-desk method of study was in place by 1877-1878.21 This was the period of Horace Mann and the rise of the Common School (1837-1859). Mann was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and a prominent figure in blazing a trail for education of children in the United States. Prior to Mann, most schooling was done in the one-room schoolhouse by a single teacher for students of various ages and abilities, using a teaching method that became popular on a global scale during the early nineteenth century. The method was based on the abler pupils being used as ‘helpers’ to the teacher, passing on the information they had learned to other students. Mann proposed a revolutionary new method of teaching that promised to be much more effective and skilled in preparing young students for life in the age of an industrialized world. His proposal was based on a Prussian model of schooling that he had observed and recognized as being ‘age graded’—students were assigned by age to different grades and progressed through them, regardless of aptitude. Together, with the lecture method used in European universities, students were treated more as passive recipients of instruction than as active participants in instructing one another. In Hurley, with the help of the State of New York Board of Education, the school district began the construction of District School No. 4, Hurley, that better suited the new method of teaching. Instead of the traditional one-room school, the new school that opened in 1836 divided the teaching into two
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classrooms, grades 1 through 4 on the lower level, and grades 5 through 8 on the upper level. This is the school that was in operation when Homer visited Hurley in the 1870s and he would have had access to the classroom with the vaulted ceiling. The one-room schoolhouse on Hurley Mountain Road may have still been in operation, but if so, it was in its last years of functioning as a school. In 1872, it may have served the children of the immediate farming area and those who lived north of Esopus Creek, near Eagles Nest. The new school system in New England showed a strong advocacy for moral and civic principles. Teacher institutes and normal schools were established from Concord, Vermont, to the Prairie States. The nation’s teacher-training infrastructure grew extensively following the Civil War. There were new job opportunities for women who filled a void for teaching positions. Generally, elementary schoolteachers were trained at normal schools, while secondary schoolteachers were usually trained at colleges and universities. The new changes brought progress in all areas of education in America with lasting benefits for society and the training for future leaders in all sectors of the nation’s workforce. Reading was at the heart of the educational process and an important means of communication and information sharing. It was considered important to read aloud and to learn to express ideas, thoughts and interpret meaning. These ideas are well expressed in nearly all of Homer’s schoolroom scenes and illustrations.
THE DRAWING LESSON The lesson being taught is twofold: to recognize and learn the names of various geometric shapes and to learn to draw by connecting the lines. The painting could just as well have been titled ‘the drawing lesson.’ Drawing instruction by connecting lines was a popular teaching method for elementary students in the 1870s. Drawing was considered an important tool to enhance the ability of pupils who may one day find employment in the expanding industrial world.
Fig. 89. Blackboard [The Schoolteacher], 1877 Watercolor 19-3/4 x 12-3/4 in. (50.17 x 32.39 cm) Inscribed, l.r. on blackboard: Homer ’77 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gift of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., in honor of the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1990.60.1
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this is true, then he also placed the blond-haired boy, seen reading in the classroom in The Noon Recess, standing in the doorway in School Time.
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t seems that Homer initially painted the school interior in The Country School (signed and dated at the lower right: Winslow Homer—1871). According to inscribed dates, he also painted The Mill, 1871, before he painted the two versions of Snap the Whip the following year. Though it seems highly unlikely, Homer may have painted the following works within the same year: The Noon Recess, 1873, The Fisherman’s Wife, 1873, and The Red School House, 1873. Though the dates are not clear, Country School is thought to have been painted in 1873. Homer’s signature is found on the bench inscribed: Homer 187[3]. It is possible that Homer inscribed the dates on many of these paintings at or close to the same period of time, perhaps as late as 1875, to account for the similarities in the pose and age of the models. Awakening the past can be a daunting task, but sometimes plausible and well worth the attempt. Speculation on a location with just a shred of evidence can be wearisome. The exact location of the schoolhouse has been one of the great mysteries to Winslow Homer scholars and historians. It would have been helpful if Homer had kept a diary or if there was some verifiable account of his travels and field trips that related to his work. The probe was beneficial since the search led to greater clarification of subjects and location of sites in other works by Homer. With the confirmation of the schoolyard venue in the farming community of Hurley, it is possible to imagine the scenes that Homer painted during his time there, including Making Hay, 1872; A Country Store—Getting Weighed, 1871; and The Last Days of Harvest, 1872. Snap the Whip shows schoolmates playing together on the playground with the red schoolhouse in the
background. The location is on Hurley Mountain Road, just a short distance from the Ten Eyck and Newkirk farms. The squatters’ colony on Hurley Mountain, known as Eagles Nest [unrelated to the biographical novel titled Surry of Eagle’s-Nest that Homer illustrated in 1866], was just above the site of the schoolhouse where a single-lane road leads up to the top of the mountain. According to Doreen Lyke, it was during the Civil War that freed or runaway slaves, Native Americans and some Dutch-speaking migrants settled Eagles Nest. The Hurley Mountain people living at Eagles Nest have a unique history but few details are known. Presumably, the children from the community would have attended the one-room schoolhouse at the bottom of the hill on Hurley Mountain Road. With the adoption of Common School Laws of 1812, New York County school districts were required to have a school ‘within walking distance of its population.’26 This might help explain why there would have been an outmoded schoolhouse still operating in Hurley during the 1870s. In 1875, Homer made a watercolor depicting a young negro boy, titled Taking Sunflower to Teacher (Georgia Museum of Art). The watercolor shows a boy wearing tattered clothing and holding a single sunflower to bring to his teacher, obviously someone he held in high esteem. Perhaps more than any other work by Homer during this period, Taking Sunflower to Teacher is telling of the sensitivity that Homer felt and effectively presented through his subject. Homer masterfully conveys a sense of empathy and suggests a feeling of innocence mixed with optimism in the endearing gesture of the young boy who has few possessions of his own. Yet, he is able to overcome his limitations with God-given resources that allow him to pick something he believes to be beautiful to give to his teacher. His mood is not thoughtless; Homer places into the composition a butterfly that rests on the boy’s shoulder, a symbol of his transformation Continued on p. 211
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OFFERING OF GRATITUDE In 1875, Homer created a series that included more than a half dozen watercolors, oil paintings and drawings focused on a negro boy around the age of ten. The boy is dressed in the same clothes in all the works, including Taking Sunflower to Teacher and Contraband. The series provides strong evidence that links the oneroom schoolhouse to the community of Eagles Nest, located just north of Hurley, New York, where Homer painted Snap the Whip, 1872. The negro boy holding the sunflower sits next to a small chalk slate with the initials ‘WH’ and the date ‘1875.’ This single fragment suggests that the boy was a student at the one-room schoolhouse located at the bottom of the mountain, where Hurley Mountain Road and Eagles Nest Road meet.
Fig. 99. Taking Sunflower to Teacher, 1875
Watercolor on paper 7 x 5-7/8 in. (17.78 x 14.92 cm) Georgia Museum of Art University of Georgia Eva Underhill Holbrook Memorial Collection of American Art Gift of Alfred H. Holbrook, GMOA 1945.50
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tell that Wynkoop was said to have been a ‘great friend’ of Captain Tyler. Hurley historical records identify Captain Tyler as being ‘much interested in church work’ and that he was ‘strenuous’ in his effort to improve the lives of the people who lived on Hurley Mountain in a place called Eagles Nest. 31 Tyler gave them gifts of books and money at his own expenditure. He invited preachers to come to the schoolhouse to speak to the people. He was said to be a devout Methodist of the ‘old type.’ In 1916, his daughter came to Hurley from St. Paul, Minnesota, to settle the affairs of her father’s estate, and it was the daughter who gave the town historian an account of her father’s good work.
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vintage photograph, c. 1890-1891, shows farm workers at the Newkirk family farm located just a half-mile north of the one-room schoolhouse on Hurley Mountain Road. The farmer, Charles DeWitt Newkirk, with the mutton chops, is seated with three of his children to his right. On his left is a young negro boy who looks remarkably like the boy in Homer’s watercolors Taking Sunflower to Teacher and Contraband. The boy is identified as Tom on the verso. A second vintage photograph shows the boy holding the reins of a horse, indicating that he has received training in the handling and care of livestock, and recalls Homer’s watercolors Weaning the Calf, 1875 (North Carolina Museum of Art), and The Unruly Calf, 1875 (Private collection). Like the Zouave soldier who mentored the boy in Contraband, Newkirk may also have been a mentor to Tom. The Newkirk and Ten Eyck farms were adjacent to each other and believed to have been the site of several of Homer’s subjects, including Crossing the Pasture, 1872, Chestnutting, c. 1870-1875 (Private collection), and Corn Husking, 1873-1874 (Arizona State University Art Museum). Homer also depicted farm scenes in works such as Farmyard with Ducks and Chickens, not dated (Cooper-Hewitt,
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National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution), and The Red Barn, not dated (Bowdoin College Museum of Art), that show Dutch style barns similar to those that existed in the early seventeenth century when the Dutch first settled the Hudson Valley. Vintage photos from the Hurley Heritage Society show that the Newkirk and Ten Eyck barns, among others in Ulster County, were still in use in the 1890s. In the 1870s, Homer focused on a series of portrait paintings, most including young women gazing out of windows or open doorways. From the painter’s perspective, it gave Homer an opportunity to experiment with low levels of muted color and interior light contrasted with a high level of exterior light and color. Some of Homer’s more spectacular paintings from the period include At the Window, 1872 (Princeton University Art Museum), and Girl Reading on a Stone Porch, 1872 (Private collection). Many of Homer’s paintings of this period seem to be of the same model that he used for the images of the schoolteacher. One of Homer’s last school-related paintings is titled Blackboard, 1877 (National Gallery of Art), and appears to be more of a portrait than a school theme. There has been very little interpretive information about the work. Perhaps the most astute observation is that, in all its simplicity, the teacher is instructing her young students to draw by connecting lines, a method commonly used in the 1870s. The background treatment and color of the wall suggest that the one-room schoolhouse on Hurley Mountain Road was not the setting for Blackboard. Further, the vaulted ceiling and twenty pane windows seen from the interior of the schoolroom in Country School and The Country School strongly suggest that the upper room of the two-room schoolhouse, known as District School No. 4, Hurley, would have been the location where Homer made his interior one-room
schoolhouse sketches. The first floor classroom would not have had a vaulted ceiling and the lower level window panes were much larger, with only four per window. In addition to Country School and The Country School, Blackboard is likely an interior view of the upper room at District School No. 4, Hurley.
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here are several important details that have been discovered in relation to Homer’s paintings of the Zandhoek School. The names of forty-four students ‘between the ages of 5 and under 21’ are found in the 1877-1878 attendance records of District School No. 4, Hurley.32 The teacher, Carrie C. Ryder, from Kingston, is also identified.33 She is believed to have been the model Homer depicted in several, if not all, of his school subject paintings and engravings. From an artistic perspective, Homer’s watercolor, Blackboard, is not only important in his school series, it is also the first work to show a decorative quality that had not been previously seen in his paintings. The portrait-like presentation continued in most of Homer’s work through the end of the decade. The painting titled Crossing the Pasture, 1872, is a Hurley subject and closely relates to Snap the Whip, painted the same year. Homer exhibited Crossing the Pasture at the Chicago Interstate Exposition in 1875 with the title The Bull Pasture.34 Homer focuses attention on two boys, possibly brothers, holding the handle of a onegallon bucket as they cross an open pasture in the Catskill Mountains. According to one historian connected with the Hurley Heritage Society, Michael Graves Paul knows the Hurley terrain extremely well since he grew up there and has farmed the Ten Eyck land for many years. Michael was asked to examine a picture of the painting and compare it with vintage photographs as well as to express his views as to where the open pasture might be located. Michael
responded saying: “It looks more like the upper Catskills. The mountains are too high to be the Eagle’s Nest notch. This being the 1870s, the landscape had probably been deforested and was starting to grow back with young trees. Today, the same area would not be as open and would have mature trees.” One of the telling features revealed in the painting is the stone wall in the background at the left that served as a barrier to keep livestock in the pasture rather than to let them free-graze the open hillsides. This detail does seem to confirm that the painting is a Hurley subject, but the exact meadow cannot be verified. There were many stone walls on Hurley farms, such as the one seen in the background of Crossing the Pasture. As early as 1806, fieldstones were used to define lots or property boundaries marked on plot maps. Today, few stone walls remain; however, there are still several in the Hurley farm areas, but not in the floodplain of the Esopus Valley. As for the boys in Crossing the Pasture, some historians suspect that they are going fishing. Just beyond the pasture at the Ten Eyck and Newkirk farms is a ‘fishing hole,’ known as Praemaker Creek. The archives of the Hurley Heritage Society include a vintage photo showing two boys and an elderly man fishing from the bank. Behind them is the stone wall that divides the properties of the two farms. A third boy in the photo is standing nearby and holding a small bucket, presumably containing earthworms for fish bait. The pasture, seen in the black and white photograph, is likely to have been where Homer made his sketches for the painting Crossing the Pasture. It is possible that Homer rendered a landscape setting more to his liking, with a dramatic rolling hillside, as seen in the painting. A genealogical study of children who lived at the two farms near the one-room schoolhouse has provided some interesting results. The sons of Cornelia DeWitt Newkirk and Garrett Newkirk were Benjamin (b. 1858) and Continued on p. 217
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View of a Dutch style barn at the Ten Eyck farm on Hurley Mountain Road, located one-half mile north of the red schoolhouse that Winslow Homer included in his iconic painting Snap the Whip, 1872.
DUTCH STYLE BARNS AT THE TEN EYCK BOUWERIE, HURLEY, NEW YORK Homer included Dutch style barns in many of his early paintings of the 1870s, such as Farmyard with Ducks and Chickens, [nd] (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution), and A Temperance Meeting [also titled A Gloucester Farm and Noon Time], 1874 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The latter is not identified with Gloucester as one of its titles suggests, but instead may be linked to Hurley or the nearby farm community of Saugerties. Art historian Gordon Hendricks challenged the suggestion that the painting was a Gloucester
Detail: Five children at the Ten Eyck farm playing in an unhitched horse carriage. The third boy from the left is identified as Tom, who worked at the Charles DeWitt Newkirk farm, just across the road from the Ten Eyck property.
subject and discovered that there were, in fact, never any farms in Gloucester.35 The painting is believed to be associated with Homer’s 1870 trip to Palenville, most likely while en route from Hurley to the Kaaterskill Falls. During the trip, he traveled through Saugerties where he made several sketches of a farm setting. He focused his attention on a young girl who appears to be a maid or perhaps related to the farm worker seen taking a drink of spring water from the wooden pail that the girl carries. The painting titled A Temperance Meeting, 1874, was retitled Noon Time when Homer submitted it to the Louisville Exposition in 1875. Fig. 103. William Cressy Vrooman
Children in an Unhitched Horse Carriage c. 1890-1891 Ten Eyck farm, Hurley, NY Glass plate negative Hurley Heritage Society
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Scene at the DeWitt Newkirk farm, Hurley. Charles DeWitt Newkirk (1838-1916) is seated second from right. Positioned next to him (left to right) are his three children: Maria DeWitt Newkirk (1885-1967), Tom Merritt Newkirk (1869-1955), and Mindy Etta Newkirk (1871-1951). Seated to the right of Charles is the farm worker identified as Tom.
Tom, the stable boy, holding the reins of an unsaddled riding horse at the Charles DeWitt Newkirk Farm.
The painting was most likely completed by Homer at his Tenth Street studio in Manhattan three years later, with several versions and studies that include Girl with Pail, c. 1873-1874 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), and Returning from the Spring, 1874 (Denver Art Museum). Four other paintings identify with the farm worker. They include: The Whittling Boy, 1873 (Terra Foundation for the Arts), The Rustics, 1874 (Private collection), In the Garden [Rustic Courtship], 1874 (Private collection), and The Farmer with a Pitchfork, 1874 (Private collection). The painting Four Leaf Clover, 1873 (Detroit Institute of Arts), could possibly depict the same stone and brick structure as seen in The Rustics.
The five children, including a young negro boy named Tom, are playing in the wagon at the Ten Eyck bouwerie. Tom is identified as a worker at the Charles DeWitt Newkirk farm. Based on the exceptional quality of the photograph, it is believed that William C. Vrooman, who photographed children standing in front of an American chestnut tree (see “Eyewitness to History�) and the Dutch style barn at the Ten Eyck bouwerie, may also be the photographer of the workers seated on a wagon at the Charles DeWitt Newkirk farm, across the road from the Ten Eyck farm.
Fig. 104-105. William Cressy Vrooman (Attributed)
DeWitt Newkirk Family and Farm Hands c. 1890-1891 Charles DeWitt Newkirk farm, Hurley, NY Glass plate negative Hurley Heritage Society
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STONE WALLS OF THE HUDSON VALLEY Most of the stone walls that remain in New England today were built to divide fields, with the purpose of separating animals and crops. Some of the stone walls found in the Lower Hudson Valley date back to the Dutch colonial period, when the first farmers removed trees, brush, and brambles from flats and hillsides. This process exposed acres of rock and stone that also had to be cleared. The early farmers used the stones to mark property boundaries and land usage, as well as to build the foundation for houses, barns and sheds.
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Fig. 106. Unidentified photographer Stone Wall with Gate Glass plate negative, c. 1880-1890 5 x 7 in. (12.7 x 17.78 cm) CMPE Fig. 107. Unidentified photographer
Dairy Cows in a Pasture, c. 1910 4 x 8-1/2 in. (10.16 x 21.59 cm) Dry plate gelatin process
John (b. 1866). That would make them 14 years old and 6 years old in 1872, the year that Homer painted Crossing the Pasture and Snap the Whip. The younger boy in Crossing the Pasture is seen barefoot and in the lead position at the far left in Snap the Whip. He appears to be dressed in the same clothing in both works, which was common for farm boys or models in Homer’s sketches and paintings. Charles DeWitt Newkirk lived on the adjoining farm and had three sons who would have been of school age in 1872: William, Garrett and Charles. It is possible that these boys were also depicted in Snap the Whip.
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n the archives of the Hurley historian’s office, there is a letter in which one of the local citizens commented on the clothing of the boys in Homer’s painting Snap the Whip. He thought the boys on the playground were too poorly dressed in torn and tattered clothing to be village boys, even if they were farm children in the 1870s.36 A newspaper reporter in New York agreed, saying that the boys in Snap the Whip were actually New York street children Homer had used as models for the painting. Most historians have never addressed the issue other than to simply acknowledge that the reference had been published in the New York Evening Telegram, June 8, 1872, in an article titled “The Realm of Art: Gossip Among the Brushes, Maulsticks and Easels”.37 Historical photographs, however, document that there were Hurley children who wore patched clothing and some did not have shoes. With regard to Winslow Homer’s impact on the community of Hurley, little was mentioned regarding his visits to the village until after his death in 1910, and then the information is minimal at best. Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, Curator of American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, spent a good deal of time in Hurley in the late 1950s ‘trying to piece together the story of Homer’s summers there.’ Gardner concluded that Homer’s “uncolorful personality and unobtrusive behavior seemed
to have left no dent at all on the community.”38 “One of the difficulties presented to those who would write a biography of Winslow Homer is that the man himself is so elusive. His great reserve, his love of privacy, his self-effacement, while they may be admirable characteristics, leave the biographer with at best a rather shadowy personality to deal with.”39 Unfortunately, Gardner found no significant insight into Homer’s work, his experiences, or any changes in his personal life while visiting and working in Hurley. Homer’s last visit to Hurley came in the autumn of 1877. Homer was committed and devoted to one thing above all else—his art. Through a combination of the historical records archived by the Hurley Heritage Society and Homer’s dated works of art (mainly watercolors), there is much to discover. And, it is there that we find plausible answers in regard to the artist’s life. “Homer was, at heart, a searcher for truth,” according to Gardner.40 Little is known of Homer’s personal relationships with those he knew in the village, the models in his art, and what his attraction might have been to the village and countryside of Hurley. It was there, during his mid-life period, that he found his subjects and genre to help him make the transition from illustrator to painter. Perhaps the last days of the one-room schoolhouse had served its purpose well as a venue where it may have made a difference in the lives of children who lived in the rural area of Ulster County and many other areas of America. It was a different time when children, like those seen in the painting Crossing the Pasture, or Snap the Whip, or the negro boy in Taking Sunflower to Teacher, might have needed to get their farm chores done before heading to school—some walking a few miles to make it to their seats before the school bell rang. In the winter, they would come in from the cold and hang their coats in the coat hall. They would say the Pledge of Allegiance, sing some songs and say a prayer to open the school day.
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he one-room schoolhouse is part of our American history. Most one-room schoolhouses were closed by school districts as transportation became available in the early twentieth century. Homer believed in the future of America through the nation’s youth and saw in the teacher a role of guidance and inspiration to learn and grow. It was his teacher that the boy with a sunflower was motivated to please. She taught him to think for himself and it was through her that he learned self-esteem, respect, and self-reliance—lessons that would serve him well in his path to a meaningful and productive life with purpose and virtue.
NINETEENTH CENTURY VIEW OF SCHOOLHOUSE AND PASTURE The mountainous terrain in the background near Hurley, New York, shows the Catskills, where Winslow Homer spent his summer months in 18711872. He painted some of his school scenes at the base of Hurley Mountain, including Snap the Whip. Fig. 108. Unidentified photographer
View of Hurley Mountain Road Schoolhouse and Grazing Pasture, c. 1920 Office of the Town Historian, Hurley, NY
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CROSSING THE PASTURE When Homer painted Snap the Whip in 1872, there were several children who lived on nearby farms within close walking distance to the schoolhouse, in addition to the children who lived on Hurley Mountain in the community of Eagles Nest. In the painting Crossing the Pasture, Homer includes, in the background, a bull watching the boys while they walk. A stone wall that separates the boundary of one farm from a neighboring farm can also be seen. Beyond the wall is the open space and rolling hills that can be observed in both the painting and photograph, identifying a likely location where Homer made his sketches for the painting Crossing the Pasture.
Fig. 109. Crossing the Pasture, 1872
Oil on canvas 26-1/4 x 38-1/8 in. (66.68 x 96.84 cm) Amon Carter Museum of American Art Fort Worth, Texas, 1976.37
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EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY
VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE 19TH CENTURY With the advancement of photography in the early nineteenth century, the shocking events of war were brought to public awareness. The first war where photography was utilized was the Anglo-Sikh War in Kashmir (1848-1849), followed by the Crimean War (1853-1856) between Russia, France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire. Then, the American Civil War (1861-1865) became the most photographed war of the nineteenth century. Not only did war popularize photography for reporting the news, but photography allowed soldiers the opportunity to have their images preserved in perpetuity. Further, it provided soldiers and loved ones with a way to remain connected. The widespread use of the tintype coincided with the artistic career of Winslow Homer.
T Opposite page: Fig. 110.
he more than twenty-five early tintypes included in this book and accompanying exhibition, Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction – The Engraved Works, are significant and rare. The photo imagery provides a remarkable and extraordinary resemblance to subjects in many of Homer’s wood engravings produced in the 1860s and 1870s. Culled from numerous collections and archives, the tintypes are one of a kind. These rare photo images are for the first time being exhibited and published.
Officers of 114th Pennsylvania Infantry in Front of a Tent Petersburg, Virginia, August 1864 Library of Congress
Tintype photography was a significant factor in documenting and preserving events and the personal history of those who had their image photographed for
posterity. Photography, in all its mediums, was used to record moments in the lives of people who were famous, infamous and ordinary. In the process, these photographs eventually became known as ‘snapshots’ of people’s lives and left behind impressions of whom they were. Although much remains a mystery, nineteenth century photography gives us a glimpse into the lives of people when our nation was still young. Some images provide clues about people’s dress, occupations and leisure time activities. Photographs captured a broad range of fashionable attire for men and women, sometimes including formal clothing, military and occupational uniforms, or even bathing suits. Some people posed with farm wagons or with a horse and carriage in the background. Others used props such as bicycles, musical
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instruments or tools. Most often people had their photograph taken while enjoying idle hours vacationing or visiting parks or carnivals and fairs. Mostly, we see portraits that would have been of interest to family members, relatives and acquaintances. Seldom do we see photographs of casual moments such as lounging in the parlor, taking tea service on the porch or veranda, or engaging in games of chess or croquet. There are no idle moments of women knitting, or simply observing someone relaxing, playing the piano, or reading a book. Photography was a serious matter not to be taken frivolously. Having one’s photo taken for posterity was a sobering affair.
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hotography was new even for Mark Twain, who considered the ‘taking of a photograph’ to be a special and surreal moment in life. He sat for several photos and took a serious pose every time. When asked why he did so, he replied that he considered the camera a very important invention that could preserve, for posterity, the image and likeness of a man.1 As such, he did not want to be caught with a “silly-looking grin” on his face.2 He considered the photograph to be very important for remembering or knowing the character of a man. No doubt this outlook on the medium was considered to be true at that time by the general public as well. History seems to bear this message quite clearly; seldom can we find a total lack of concern for how we are to be remembered by others. Having a photo taken becomes a burden in this regard and it absorbs and holds the subject hostage to how one would like to appear to others.
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The tintype was patented in 1856 by Hamilton Smith, an Ohio chemist, and remained popular in America until the early twentieth century. The invention and development of several photography processes went through numerous revisions and transformations to reach a point when the medium could produce an image of sharp focus with clear, recognizable detail. Some of the early limitations of photography required that subjects could not move, sometimes for as long as thirty seconds, to assure that the images would not be out of focus. Eventually, photography advanced with faster exposure speeds, giving ‘still photography’ the ability to capture subjects even while in motion, with reasonable sharpness and detail. Tintypes are made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel to support a light sensitive emulsion. The lacquered support is resilient and does not require a long drying time. The tintype can be fixed with a positive image made within minutes after the picture is taken. Not only can it be produced quickly but it is also very inexpensive to make. Each plate produces a single image and there is no negative that can be used to create reproductions of the original. As with earlier photographic processes, the tintype required that subjects remained stationary so that the image would be in focus. Before the tintype, being photographed in the nineteenth century was an uncommon event. It was the tintype that changed that. Tintype photography saw more uses and captured a wider variety of settings and subjects
Fig. 111. Small Oval
Union Case (closed) c. 1860-1862 Composite of sawdust and shellac 2-1/8 x 1-7/8 in. (5.4 x 4.76 cm) CMPE
than any earlier photographic process. The development of the tintype created a number of itinerant photographers. Enterprising photographers set up photo booths and studios almost anywhere—parks, fairs and vacation resorts. Others set up temporary studios in tents at military bases and near battlefield sites where they could entice soldiers and sailors to have their images photographed. The men would pay as little as twenty-five cents for ‘gem’ size images, or a larger image could be made with a paper or tin frame for just a dollar more. A ‘union case,’ made of a plastic substance that often included decorated reliefs of flowers, musical instruments or scenes of nature, was also available to preserve and enhance the tintype image, making it a more lasting keepsake for loved ones to cherish and enjoy.
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intype photography was widely popular in the 1860s-1870s and is still in use today by some fine art photographers. It was during the tintypes height of popularity that Homer produced many outstanding and remarkable engravings of the American scene. The following tintypes and other photographic mediums included in this book and exhibition document a moment in the lives of those who posed for nineteenth century photographers.
Fig. 112. Photo of a Young Woman in Small Oval Union Case
(photo is hand tinted with gold details on jewelry) Tintype, c. 1860-1862 2-1/8 x 1-7/8 in. (5.4 x 4.76 cm)
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SURVIVORS IN SPITE OF HARDSHIPS OR IMPEDIMENTS The veteran at the left seen with crutches has had his lower leg amputated. On his cap there is a cloverleaf insignia of the First Division of the Second Corps of the Sixty-first New York Volunteers, the same insignia seen on the canteen lying on the ground in Homer’s oil painting The Veteran in a New Field (Metropolitan Museum of Art). The young woman assisting the veteran is identified as Homer’s cousin from Belmont, Massachusetts, Florence Tryon.
120. (Detail) Thanksgiving Day—The Church Porch Published by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, December 23, 1865 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-15/16 x 9-1/8 in. (35.4 x 23.18 cm)
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THE EMPTY SLEEVE AT NEWPORT Our Watering-Places—The Empty Sleeve at Newport depicts a woman holding the reins of the horse. As she drives the buggy, her male passenger sits beside her, his arm amputated due to a war wound. The role of women changed because of the war, and many women learned how to drive a team of horses and perform a number of other tasks out of necessity, while the men were away. Homer’s cousin Florence Tryon was the model for the woman driving the buggy.
116. Our Watering-Places— The Empty Sleeve at Newport Published by Harper’s Weekly, August 26, 1865 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/4 x 13-3/4 in. (23.5 x 34.93 cm)
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THE ARBORIST In Spring Farm Work—Grafting, a worker is seen pruning the branches of a fruit tree. Homer understood the practice of pruning and cultivating fruit trees. His observation of the farm worker most likely took place in the Catskills near Hurley. The Hudson Valley remains a rich source of fruits and other produce as well as honey and dairy products.
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178. Spring Farm Work—Grafting Published by Harper’s Weekly, April 30, 1870 Wood engraving on newsprint 6-7/8 x 9-1/8 in. (17.46 x 23.18 cm)
DUTCH FARM WORKER The arborist seen in Homer’s engraving Spring Farm Work—Grafting is observed from an unusual perspective, high in the bare branches of a fruit tree. The farm worker is pruning branches that will alter the shape of the tree and produce a greater yield at harvest time. The location of the farm is in the Hudson River Valley where the Dutch settled in the early and mid-1600s. The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company. One of the first Dutch settlements was Nieuw Dorp (New Village) that is today named Hurley, New York. Seen in the background of Spring Farm Work— Grafting is a haycock and hay barrack, similar to those used in Holland as depicted in etchings by Dutch Master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Fig. 14, p. 46).
Fig. 113. Farm Laborer Dressed in Long Sleeves,
Suspenders and Brimmed Hat Tintype c. 1870 3-5/8 x 2-1/2 in. (9.21 x 6.35 cm) CMPE
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CHILDREN’S WORK Homer often turned to scenes of rural life in farming areas of New England, with a fondness for depicting children at play and enjoying nature and the countryside. Occasionally, his subjects focused on chores that gave them an important role in the family and community, such as gathering chestnuts or swallow eggs, picking berries, haying and shucking corn. Nineteenth century life for children in America was quite different in Homer’s time than it is today. In the 1870s, America was shaken by the effects of war and began to see, as Homer did, their young years as a time of lost innocence. The introduction of modern machines and the proliferation of new growth in an ever-expanding and complicated world had become a challenge for society at nearly every level. Life was not easy for many children, though often it was more difficult for children living in urban areas than in rural areas. Homer observed that families living in the city depended on their children to help make ends meet, while in the rural areas, children interfaced with nature and the seasons in performing tasks. Homer saw that children living in rural areas had more freedom. They were the hope for the future in Homer’s view, and that of America.
187. Chestnutting Published by Every Saturday, October 29, 1870 Wood engraving on newsprint 11-3/4 x 8-3/4 in. (29.85 x 22.23 cm)
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THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREE This American chestnut tree is on record as the largest of its kind to have been photographed prior to the devastation of the Asian fungus infestation in the early 1900s that nearly wiped out all the Majestic chestnut trees in North America. This tree would have most certainly been observed by Winslow Homer in the 1870s when he visited Hurley, New York. The location of the tree is within a half mile of the one-room schoolhouse where Homer made his sketches and studies for the paintings titled Snap the Whip. The farm property is adjacent to the property where the school was located on Hurley Mountain Road.
Fig. 114. William Cressy Vrooman (1857-1939) American Chestnut Tree, c. 1889-1895 Print from glass plate negative Location: Ten Eyck bouwerie (farm), Hurley Mountain Road, Hurley, NY
Courtesy: Hurley Heritage Society; Collection of Marguerite Veeder Yates Parker, granddaughter of John Wynkoop Veeder. Gift of Ellen McCoy Messick in honor of family ancestors in Ulster County and Hurley, including the families of Ten Eyck, DeWitt, Wynkoop, Veeder, Wygant and Yates. The children standing in front of the tree are (l-r) John and Edward (Ned) Vrooman, Florence Veeder, Marguerite and Robert Yates. Pretending to shoot chestnuts out of the tree is John Wynkoop Veeder, father of Florence and the grandfather to the other children seen in the photo. The photo is thought to be the only image of a fully mature American chestnut tree in New York State.
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THE DINNER HORN Homer produced three paintings of The Dinner Horn portraying a kitchen maid sounding a horn to summon the farm workers for the noonday meal. Homer painted three versions of the subject, one of which is thought to be a study (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), 1869, for the painting in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1870. The third painting is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1873. He also produced a wood engraving with the same title published by Harper’s Weekly, in June 1870. There are variations in each of his works, except for the pose of the kitchen maid. The wood engraving is unique in that it shows through the doorway the interior of the kitchen and the dinner table set for the field workers. Just inside the door, Homer places a farm cat near a mudsill or boot scraper. In the years prior to the Civil War, the mudsill played a role in what was termed ‘The Mudsill Theory’ delivered before Congress by South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond, a proponent of slavery. He proposed that all societies that hoped to prosper must have an underclass to take care of menial duties so that others could live in a refined and luxurious style. Homer drew attention to the notion in a subtle way by including the mudsill in his engraving. Homer linked the cat to the mudsill to further his meaning. It was the duty of farm cats to keep down the vermin.
180. The Dinner Horn Published by Harper’s Weekly, June 11, 1870 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-3/4 x 9 in. (34.93 x 22.86 cm)
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FARM MAID This tintype, from the nineteenth century, is classified as an occupational photograph that shows working class people with the tools of their trade. Oftentimes, people depicted in occupational photographs proudly display their individuality and the nobility of their work.
Fig. 115. Farm Maid, c. 1870-1880
Tintype 1/6th plate 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 in. (8.89 x 6.35 cm) CMPE
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WOMAN WEARING A WAISTCOAT AND FULL SKIRT The dress worn by the woman seen in the tintype photo appears similar to the dress worn by the woman seen in Homer’s wood engraving Looking at the Eclipse. The sightseers are standing on the roof top of a New York building, observing the lunar eclipse that took place in the fall of 1865.
Fig. 119. Woman Wearing a
Waistcoat, c. 1865 Tintype 3-1/16 x 1-3/4 in. (7.78 x 4.45 cm) CMPE
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THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1865 Homer’s engraving Looking at the Eclipse, similar to another artist’s engraving that appeared in Harper’s Weekly, shows spectators observing the lunar event as they look through a tiny pin hole in small cards to block out dangerous sun rays and protect the eye from damage. The site where Homer made his engraving is from the rooftop of The University Building where Homer had his studio on the top floor. The studio gave him access to the rooftop where he could paint his models in natural light. The church steeple at the far right identifies Grace Episcopal Church, located at the corner of 10th Street and Broadway. The male figure appears to be Homer’s brother, Charles, and standing behind him is his cousin, Florence Tryon, from Belmont, Massachusetts, whom he used as a model for many of his illustrations in the late 1860s and early 1870s. She is wearing the same hat with feather plume in Homer’s engraving Our Watering-Places— Horse-Racing at Saratoga.
118. Looking at the Eclipse Frank Leslie’s Chimney Corner, December 16, 1865 Wood engraving on newsprint 10-3/4 x 9-1/4 in. (27.31 x 23.5 cm)
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FARMERS MARKET IN WINTER The farmers market at Haymarket Square in Boston was one of the first active physical retail markets featuring foods and farm supplies sold directly by farmers to consumers. Not only did the farmers sell their grains, produce and meats, they offered blocks of coal dredged from their fields, firewood as well as lumber, blocks of ice in winter harvested from nearby lakes, and handmade tools and furniture, including cabinetry as well as tables and chairs. Some farmers also wove cane seats and backing. To be a farmer in the nineteenth century required resourcefulness. Most farms, unlike today, averaged only about one hundred to one hundred fifty acres, enough to provide for the family and also market goods to the local community. Refrigeration did not come into existence until the twentieth century. Ice boxes that used block ice to cool food were common in many homes from the early 1800s to the early 1930s, when the first commercial refrigerators were introduced for home use.
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44. Sleighing in Haymarket Square, Boston Published by Ballou’s Pictorial, January 29, 1859 Wood engraving on newsprint 5 x 9-3/8 in. (12.7 x 23.81 cm)
FARM SLEDS AT A TOWN MARKET
The American economy in the colonial and early settlement years was primarily made up of the fishing and agriculture industries. By the 1830s, the population growth as well as expansion of the frontier created new opportunities to ranch and farm. Originally, the small New England farm was intended to provide sustenance for one’s own family and possibly a portion for the local community. With the Industrial Revolution in America, there became a need for farmers to produce more crops and livestock for the expanding market. Markets, like the one seen here, were located in urban areas where farmers could sell and distribute their goods as well as purchase grains and supplies.
Fig. 120. Farmer’s Market with
Horse Drawn Sleds c. post-1900 Original photo documentation and site unknown
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LUMBER CAMP SAWMILL Most logging crews in timbered areas operated only in the winter, taking advantage of the hard, frozen ground to haul heavy loads of logs on sleighs rather than on wheeled wagons. Tree cutting or felling was done in cold, wet weather, often for more than twelve hours a day and for low pay. Timber companies provided lodging in camps during the harsh winter months when the cutting took place. One of the main challenges for the camp operators was to keep a hungry crew well fed with hot meals each day. Fig. 121. Lumberjack, c. 1860
Tintype 1/6th plate 3-3/8 x 2-1/4 in. (8.57 x 5.72 cm) CMPE
Fig. 121-a. Lumber Camp/Sawmill, c. 1875 Glass negative 4 x 6 in. (10.16 x 15.24 cm) CMPE
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LUMBERJACK/LOGGER Felling trees of the size observed in Lumbering in Winter was necessary in supplying lumber for commercial use to rebuild America following the Civil War. New growth and the expansion of the country brought about a high demand for wood from timbered areas coast to coast. Lumbering in Winter shows two lumberjacks felling trees on a mountainside in cold weather conditions. The lumberjack in the foreground is attempting to cut down a tree of immense size. The lumberjack in the background is preparing to divide a tree trunk into more manageable sizes. This will make it easier to transport the timber to the sawmill where it will be cut into lumber lengths for the marketplace.
194. Lumbering in Winter Published by Every Saturday, January 28, 1871 Wood engraving on newsprint 11-5/8 x 8-7/8 in. (29.53 x 22.54 cm)
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DEER-STALKING IN THE ADIRONDACKS IN WINTER Deer hunting in the nineteenth century provided an important and common source of food. Deer were often killed not only for meat, but also for the hide. The tanning industry was popular in the Catskills, as well as the Adirondacks. Professional hunters and trappers preferred not to shoot large game that might impair the price of the hide. Instead, they would ‘hound’ deer to death, using dogs to chase them into the water where they could easily be drowned, avoiding damage to the overall condition of the pelt.
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193. Deer-Stalking in the Adirondacks in Winter Published by Every Saturday, January 21, 1871 Wood engraving on newsprint 8-7/8 x 11-5/8 in. (22.54 x 29.53 cm)
BACKWOODSMAN The Adirondacks is a vast forest of six million acres located in northeastern New York State. When Homer visited there for the first time in 1870, the area was unprotected from development and forestry cultivation. Homer made more than nineteen visits to the Adirondacks, often accompanied by friends and family members. On some of these visits, he hired backwoodsmen or mountainmen to serve as guides in getting him to remote areas where he could paint and fish. One of the guides Homer used regularly was Rufus Wallace. He resembled the bearded figure in some of Homer’s engravings and the man in the tintype photo published here, dated from the same period in history.
Fig. 122. Backwoodsman, c. 1870
Tintype 3-1/8 x 2-3/4 in. (7.94 x 6.99 cm) CMPE
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231. The Family Record Published by Harper’s Bazar, August 28, 1875 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-1/2 x 9-1/4 in. (34.29 x 23.5 cm)
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POSTSCRIPT DUTCH IMMIGRANT DISCOVERY IN WINSLOW HOMER ENGRAVING
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he subject of Winslow Homer’s last wood engraving for the pictorial press, The Family Record, at first glance, seems atypical. Published by Harper’s Bazar on August 28, 1875, the scene addresses a historical theme. In the same year, Homer made another engraving, The Battle of Bunker Hill—Watching the Fight from Copp’s Hill in Boston, for Harper’s Weekly that was published on June 26, 1875. Both images address patriotic subjects that Homer presents celebrating the centennial of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. In The Family Record, Homer depicts a young couple with their newborn baby lying contently in a cradle nearby. The father enters the child’s name into the family record book. The event identifies with the post-Revolutionary period when America had gained its independence from Britain and was just beginning to grow and prosper as a nation. Documenting one’s place of birth established a hereditary lineage in America’s society of a free democracy. In Europe, nobility ruled by oppression, supported by strong religious forces. In the mid-seventeenth century, colonial settlements began to take hold in America with thirteen colonies established by people not only from Britain, but also from Belgium (Flemings and Walloons), France (French Huguenots), Scandinavia and Germany.
Beginning in the late seventeenth century, enlightenment movements, intellectuals and free thinkers were demanding reforms and freedoms for their countrymen. The colonies grew rapidly in the eighteenth century. In 1700, there were about 250,000 European and African newcomers and settlers in North America’s thirteen colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were nearly 2.5 million. These colonists did not have much in common but they were able to band together and form a coalition that eventually won their independence and, perhaps more importantly, were united in creating a constitution and bill of rights that protects and guarantees individual freedoms and equal justice to all its citizens. Peace, freedom and social progress became a right for all Americans. People could own land and worship without persecution. They were given the freedom of assembly and the right to free speech. Homer effectively communicated these values in his 1875 illustrations for the pictorial press. In the composition that he created for The Family Record, he includes on the wall behind the couple a painting that suggests that we are a nation of immigrants, that we are all from different places. He clearly illustrates that the heritage of this family originated in Holland, evidenced by the windmill he places in the landscape.
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arly Dutch settlers populated the Hudson River Valley where Winslow Homer spent much of his time painting in the 1870s. The first Dutch settlement was established in the early seventeenth century near present day Albany, New York. A decade later, Fort Amsterdam was built at the lower end of what is today known as Manhattan Island to fortify the harbor and protect the Dutch colony operations in the Hudson Valley.
A close observation of the engraving titled The Family Record reveals that Winslow Homer included in the background a portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop. The original portrait hung in the Wynkoop home. Homer’s depiction of the painting is the same as the original except for a windmill in the distance, indicating the boy’s heritage is Dutch. Homer’s addition of this detail suggests to the readers of Harper’s Bazar that all Americans come from different parts of the world, hinting at the multicultural makeup of this new nation.
231. The Family Record (Detail) Portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop with Sword Fig. 123. Sword, c. mid-18th century
Ceremonial Saber, Steel with silver horn and jewel 36 x 3-1/2 in. (91.4 x 8.9 cm) The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens Gift of Virginia Steel Scott Foundation 83.8.49a
The portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop is attributed to Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Vanderlyn is identified as an American painter, born in Holland, who came to America in 1718 and settled in Kingston, New York. He was primarily a portrait painter who sought out his subjects among the Dutch families who lived in the Hudson River Valley.
Wynkoop family, apparently quite well. He was obviously very familiar with the painting and had made some detailed studies of it. The models that Homer used in the composition are also likely to have been actual descendants of the young boy. Records indicate that James Wynkoop, son of George Wynkoop, was the head of the household when Homer visited Hurley. Judging from facial features observed in historical photos, there is a likeness that suggests that James may very well be the model for the father seen in The Family Record engraving.
Wynkoop’s land was located less than a half mile from the one-room schoolhouse where Homer painted two of his early masterpieces Snap the Whip (The Butler Institute of American Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The discovery reveals that Winslow Homer had known the
There have been several new discoveries related to Homer’s engraving and the painting shown in the background. Gail and Bruce Whistance, historical researchers in Hurley, uncovered several photographs that belonged to the Wynkoop family that show the same ceiling beams as well as the chair that is in Homer’s engraving.
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Fig. 124. Pieter Vanderlyn (American, 1687-1778) Portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop, c. 1743 Oil on panel 43 x 25 in. (109.2 x 63.5 cm) The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens Gift of the Virginia Scott Steel Foundation 83.8.49
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Fig. 125. Cornelius Wynkoop House,
Living Room Interior, c. 1880-1890 Courtesy of Viola Opdahl and Hurley Heritage Society
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omer shows in his engraving that the painting of Cornelius Wynkoop is displayed in the Wynkoop home with a sword hanging above the picture. The sword belonged to Wynkoop when he fought with the Continental Army against the British in the American Revolution. Wynkoop joined the army as a major, but quickly rose through the ranks to become a colonel. He was well acquainted with General George Washington, commander in chief of the army and future first president of the United States. Washington visited the village of Hurley in 1775 while passing through on his way to Kingston. Wynkoop introduced Washington to village residents in front of the Van Sickle Inn and Tavern. The sword is now on permanent display, together with the painting Cornelius Wynkoop, at the Virginia Steel
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Scott Galleries at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Both the sword and painting were gifts to the museum from the Virginia Steel Scott Foundation. Ellen McCoy Messick, a descendant of the Ten Eyck, DeWitt and Wynkoop families, shared images of three paintings that have been gifted to the Senate House State Historic Site and Museum in Kingston, New York. The paintings include the portraits of John Ten Eyck and Ten Eyck DeWitt, painted by Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), and an earlier portrait of Matheus Ten Eyck, painted by Pieter Vanderlyn. These were the last known family members to have lived on the Ten Eyck bouwerie.
MATHEUS TEN EYCK
The baptismal records of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York, show that Matheus (Mathew, Matthew) Ten Eyck was born in Hurley, New York, in 1728, and was baptized the same year. The ‘Old Cemetery’ in Hurley documents this name within the Ten Eyck family section: Matthew Ten Eyck February 22, 1728 - June 11, 1809. The office of the Town Historian records indicate that Mathew Ten Eyck, in 1794, at the age of sixty-six, gave the land located just south of the Ten Eyck farm for the one-room schoolhouse at the foot of Eagles Nest Road, depicted in Snap the Whip, painted by Winslow Homer in 1872. He also gave a plot of land on Hurley’s Main street where the Old Stone School was built and remained until 1836. It was torn down and replaced with a two-room, two-story school known as District School No. 4, Hurley, commonly referred to as Zandhoek School. The portrait of Matheus Ten Eyck, seen at the right, was painted by Pieter Vanderlyn in 1733. Vanderlyn was an American Colonial artist who was born in Holland and moved to America in 1718. He settled in Kingston, New York, where he married the daughter of a Dutch clergyman. He earned a living as a land speculator and by painting portraits of Dutch settlers living in the Hudson River Valley. Vanderlyn never signed any of his paintings and it is believed that all his work was produced in the narrow time frame of just fifteen years, between 1730 and 1745. His painting of Matheus Ten Eyck, with family ties to the Wynkoop family, was made at the beginning of Vanderlyn’s career; he painted the portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop, 1743, at the very end of his career as a painter. Often, Vanderlyn borrowed backgrounds found in books and prints to enhance the settings, such as the formal, palatial garden in this portrait of Matheus Ten Eyck. By contrast, the portrait of Cornelius Wynkoop shows a scene with the Catskill mountains in the background and a pasture with a horse and slave (groom), as well as chickens in the foreground to suggest a rural farm atmosphere. The children in both paintings wear Dutch clothing in style during the period between 1700 and 1750. In many respects, children simply wore a smaller version of adult clothing. Boys wore shirts, sometimes open at the neck, breeches, waistcoats and coats. The coat was fitted and trimmed differently than a man’s coat, and boys often went bareheaded. Buckle shoes were common throughout the century.
Fig. 126. Pieter Vanderlyn (American, 1687-1778)
Portrait of Matheus Ten Eyck, c. 1733 Oil on canvas 54-3/4 x 33-3/4 in. (139.07 x 85.73 cm) New York State Office of Parks and Recreation Senate House Historic Site, Kingston, New York Gift of Sarah DeWitt Davenport and Elizabeth DeWitt von der Linden SH.1987.A-B
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CHECKLIST WITH INTERPRETIVE NOTES A DIDACTIC APPROACH
Winslow Homer From Poetry to Fiction – The Engraved Works is devoted solely to the analysis and understanding of Winslow Homer’s graphic oeuvre produced between the years 1856 and 1875. It is the only comprehensive and fully illustrated publication with didactic interpretations of Homer’s graphic art. These works were created for publication in the pictorial press as well as illustrations for books, many related to poetry of the nineteenth century. Included are some photographs, etchings and engravings by other artists that add to the interpretation and understanding of Homer’s work and subject matter.
109. The Approach of the British Pirate “Alabama” (Detail) Published by Harper’s Weekly, April 25, 1863 Wood engraving on newsprint 13-3/4 x 9-1/8 in. (34.93 x 23.18 cm)
© Contemporary and Modern Print Exhibitions
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APPRENTICE YEARS— LITHOGRAPHS FOR SHEET MUSIC COVERS
Lithography is a process of producing an image on a flat, prepared surface, most commonly Bavarian limestone. The image is drawn with a greasy or oily substance such as a crayon, then etched and stabilized using a solution of gum arabic and nitric acid. When inking the stone using a leather roller, the stone is kept damp. The water repels the ink so that only the etched design accepts the ink for printing. A similar process in modern times is to substitute a substance other than stone, such as aluminum or zinc, with the same end result.
1.
Katy Darling, c. 1856 Sheet Music Cover Music arranged for the piano (pianoforte) Published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston Lithograph on wove paper Drawing by W. Homer for J.H. Bufford Lithography, Boston 13-1/8 x 9-5/8 in. (33.34 x 24.45 cm)
Between 1820 and 1860, an estimated fifteen thousand poems from well-known authors were adapted to music based on the lyrics. Poets who had written verse for music include Thomas Moore, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Herrick, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Milton, Sir Walter Scott, John Greenleaf Whittier and William Wordsworth. The J.H. Bufford Lithography workshop in Boston was responsible for producing a large number of sheet music covers for sale to the general public. “Katy Darling” is an Irish ballad that became popular in America in the late 1840s. The cover illustration is among the first known sheet music covers that Homer produced, at the age of nineteen, for the Bufford Lithography workshop. Homer’s sheet music cover is labeled specifically for pianoforte. There was also sheet music for voice and guitar. The musical score for “Katy Darling” is credited to Vincenzo Bellini and J.G. Whiteman. The ballad is anonymous. The unsigned lithograph shows a man sitting on the ground at the gravesite of his departed love. The words “Katy Darling” are engraved onto the face of the tombstone, on which the man focuses.
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Near the Broken Stile, c. 1856-1857 Sheet Music Cover Music written by Frank Romer Published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston Lithograph on wove paper Drawing by W. Homer for J.H. Bufford Lithography, Boston 13-1/8 x 9-5/8 in. (33.34 x 24.45 cm)
Homer created a rural New England scene with a farmhouse in the background and field hands loading a wagon with hay in the distance. The central figures consist of a gentleman and a fashionably dressed young woman standing next to a broken stile (a step or structure which provides people a passage through or over a fence). The lyrics of “Near the Broken Stile” describe the meeting of the young couple and the freshness of the outdoors with sounds of nature and fragrances in the air.
3.
Minnie Clyde, Kitty Clyde’s Sister, c. 1856-1857 Sheet Music Cover Words and music by L.V.H. Crosby Published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston Lithograph on wove paper Drawing by W. Homer for J.H. Bufford Lithography, Boston 13-1/8 x 9-5/8 in. (33.34 x 24.45 cm)
This is one of the last graphic images that Homer produced while serving as an apprentice in the lithography shop of J.H. Bufford in Boston. During his three years of service as an apprentice, Homer made lithograph drawings primarily for sheet music covers that related to Irish, Scottish and American old-time songs (North American Folk Music), popular in the mid-1850s. Some of the songs were nostalgic folklore and performed in theaters and music halls, as well as sung in the home, usually accompanied by piano. The lyrics for “Minnie Clyde, Kitty Clyde’s Sister” describe an Irish lass as “blithe and gay as the robin sings,” who “lived at the foot of the hill . . . by the old mill-side.” Homer depicts young Minnie Clyde as a country maiden posing near a grove of trees, with mountains in the background. Her left hand rests on the shelf of the water well and several animals surround her, including a bird, a dog and a frog. Homer’s drawing gives a subtle description of the song lyrics.
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WOOD ENGRAVINGS
ORGANIZED BY DATE OF PUBLICATION
Between 1857 and 1875, Winslow Homer produced in excess of two hundred and fifty drawings for prints and wood engravings; two hundred and thirty-one of which are illustrated on the following pages with didactic information. Many of these works have been reproduced and included in numerous books and publications, but often with little or no interpretive information. The following illuminated monochromatic graphic works by Winslow Homer represent one-third of the artist’s creative output. Perhaps no other artist in modern times was better prepared to transition from graphic artist to painter. This long preparation period helped to produce one of America’s most popular and beloved artists of all time.
Wood engraving is a printmaking and letterpress printing technique, in which an artist works an image into a block of wood. The artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the image, and ink fills the valleys, or the removed areas. A wood engraving deteriorates less quickly than a copper-plate engraving, and has a distinctive white-on-black character.
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4.
Captain J. W. Watkins Published by Ballou’s Pictorial, June 6, 1857 Wood engraving on newsprint 4-1/2 x 3-7/8 in. (11.43 x 9.84 cm)
This portrait of Captain Watkins was Homer’s first published wood engraving for the pictorial press. Generally, assignments given to a newly hired artist for Ballou’s Pictorial were limited to obituary notices, at least until the editors decided to ‘take a chance’ on more ambitious assignments. Homer proved himself worthy of more challenging assignments with the sketch he made titled Corner of Winter, Washington and Summer Streets, Boston (Cat. 5). Captain Watkins served as senior merchant commander of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company of New York and was bestowed the title ‘The Commodore.’ The Yankee captain sailed from New York to China and ports in between. In the accompanying notice of Captain Watkin’s obituary, the column read that he “saw a variety of adventures, including conflicts with pirates, and told tales of hardship and peril that could fill a volume.” The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded in 1848 and given rights to transport mail under U.S. Government contract from the Isthmus of Panama to California. The company initially believed it would be transporting agricultural goods from the West Coast but, just as operations began, gold was discovered in California and business boomed almost from the start. During the California Gold Rush in 1849, the company was a key transporter of goods and men, who played a role in the growth of San Francisco. In the midst of the Civil War, the company transported Chinese immigrants to the West Coast to help build the transcontinental railroad.
5.
Corner of Winter, Washington and Summer Streets, Boston Published by Ballou’s Pictorial, June 13, 1857 Wood engraving on newsprint 7-1/4 x 9-1/2 in. (18.42 x 24.13 cm)
When Winslow Homer initially sold drawings to Ballou’s Pictorial, the weekly newspaper in Boston, the editor wrote at the first publication that Homer was “a promising young artist of this city, whose works are exceedingly faithful in architectural detail and spirited in character.” The wood engraving, Corner of Winter, Washington and Summer Streets, Boston, displays remarkable maturity for an artist in his early twenties. The scene is brimming with action. Women on street walkways are fashionably dressed, some accompanied by children. Men wear top hats; one looks as though he is waiting for the arrival of his coach. In the center, a ‘run-away’ team of horses race through the intersection. A woman carrying a parasol rushes to get out of the way. A policeman, wearing a badge on his lapel, jumps out toward the coach, pointing a warning to the coachman to slow down or stop the carriage. In the foreground are two dogs. To the left center, an organ grinder, with a monkey on a leash, amuses the children on the walkway. A young girl appears to be playing a musical rasp to accompany the organ grinder. Homer’s engraving is a clever marketing and advertising piece. He creates lots of excitement and activity. Then, he identifies a familiar Boston street and shows storefronts with the names of merchants displayed on awnings. Homer’s engraving served as a sort of ‘promotional’ benefit by identifying businesses that had been regular advertisers with Ballou’s Pictorial. C H E C K L I S T W I T H I N T E R P R E T I V E N OT E S
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18.
Nellie and Her Sisters Hearing the Story About Charlie The Story of Our Darling Nellie Increase Niles Tarbox Published by Henry Hoyt, Boston, 1858 Wood engraving on wove 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 in. (8.89 x 6.35 cm)
The Story of Our Darling Nellie was written and published by the Rev. Increase Niles Tarbox as a memorial tribute to his two children, Nellie and her brother, Charlie, who both died at an early age. The mortality rate of childhood death from tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever and typhoid fever was very high. Nellie was an enlightened child who made an enormous impact on her family and, through her father’s efforts, inspired many people, some of whom had experienced similar family tragedies.
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Nellie Giving a Birthday Party for Her Sisters The Story of Our Darling Nellie Increase Niles Tarbox Published by Henry Hoyt, Boston, 1858 Wood engraving on wove 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 in. (8.89 x 6.35 cm)
Homer modeled the image of young Nellie from a photograph. He shows her wearing the same dress in all of the illustrations, with the added embellishment of polka dots in the scene where Nellie is giving a birthday party for her sisters.
20.
Nellie Calling the Old Black Hen The Story of Our Darling Nellie Increase Niles Tarbox Published by Henry Hoyt, Boston, 1858 Wood engraving on wove 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 in. (8.89 x 6.35 cm)
21. Spring in the City Published by Harper’s Weekly, April 17, 1858 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/8 x 13-3/4 in. (23.18 x 34.93 cm) Homer’s engraving, Spring in the City, shows a crowd of shoppers in front of the ‘Laces & Fancy Goods’ store. Gentlemen are smartly dressed, wearing top hats, and several women hold parasols for protection from the sun. A young girl, on the far right, offers a bouquet of flowers to a gentleman who seems disinterested. A newspaper boy, carrying a copy of Harper’s Weekly under his left arm, runs out into the street capturing the viewer’s attention. The department store was a new concept that changed the way people shopped in urban America. The first department store, built by Alexander Turney Stewart, was ‘The Marble Palace.’ It was located on Broadway between Chambers and Reade Streets in New York. In 1862, Stewart opened another department store on a full city block, with eight floors and nineteen departments, offering everything from dresses to furniture. Lord & Taylor soon began to compete with Stewart, as well as Macy’s, that followed in expanding on the new concept. Other cities throughout the world copied the New York shopping model, including Chicago, San Francisco, London and Milan. In addition, GUM’s opened in Moscow in 1893. Modern merchandising had come alive in keeping with the progress of the fast-growing global industrial and economic boom of the Gilded Age.
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136.
The Veteran in a New Field Published by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 13, 1867 Wood engraving on newsprint 4-3/16 x 6-1/4 in. (10.64 x 15.88 cm)
Homer first produced The Veteran in a New Field as an oil painting just four or five months after the end of the Civil War. He allowed himself little time to contemplate the effects of the war and his artistic response. The painting was exhibited at the Annual Exhibition Artists’ Fund Society, New York, in November 1865, just seven months after the surrender of the Confederacy. The Veteran in a New Field is the first work in which Homer deliberately changed the composition and details of accuracy in favor of a larger meaning, expressed with a symbolic use of the scythe. Although the proper tool for cutting wheat would have been a cradled scythe, he instead places a single blade scythe in the hands of the farmer. Homer evokes Kronos (Cronus), the ancient Greek god of harvest, as well as the Grim Reaper, both often depicted with a sickle or scythe. Homer’s message is clear. The veteran, seen peacefully harvesting grain, had previously been a reluctant harvester of men.
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137.
The Bird-Catchers Our Young Folks Published by Ticknor and Fields, Boston, August 1867 Wood engraving on wove 3-11/16 x 5-15/16 in. (9.37 x 15.08 cm)
Homer’s drawing The Bird-Catchers is an early masterpiece. A landscape of horizontal bands creates an illusion of pictorial space that draws the eye from the subtle activities of the children, fascinated with their captives, to the trees and barns in the distance. Art collector Leo Stein made reference to Homer’s genius in creating such an image: “There is prevalently, as in all great artists, a grip upon the form strong enough to hold the mind of the observer down to the actualities presented.” Winslow Homer historian, David Tatham, explains that the way the poet, Richard Henry Stoddard, and the drawing made by Homer came together was a reversal of the usual sequence. Homer had sold five drawings of children to the publisher Ticknor and Fields before going on his year-long stay in France in late 1866. The publisher then sought writers to pen a poem or rhyme to fit the subject of each drawing. John T. Trowbridge provided the verse for three of the drawings: Watching the Crows, Green Apples, and The Strawberry Bed. Lucy Larcom responded with a poem for Swinging on a Birch-Tree, and Stoddard created verse to fit The Bird-Catchers. All three poets were successful in their efforts to complement the images produced by Homer.
138.
A Parisian Ball—Dancing at the Mabille, Paris Published by Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1867 Wood engraving on newsprint 9-1/8 x 13-3/4 in. (23.18 x 34.93 cm)
The Bal Mabille, also known as Jardin Mabille and Mabille Gardens, was a fashionable open-air dance establishment that opened in 1831 by the renowned dance instructor Monsieur Mabille. In 1844, Mabille and his sons decided to refurbish the property, creating an enchanted garden with pathways, elaborate landscaping, imitation palm trees and shrubs, an art gallery and grotto. The landscape was illuminated at night with three thousand gas lamps, colorful glass globes, and strings of filament lights suspended between the trees. The Bal Mabille was a huge tourist draw for international visitors seeking excitement and exotic entertainment that was not readily available in their homelands. Homer’s engraving shows a group of mostly male spectators watching the high kicks of the dancers in the foreground. A group of three sheiks is seen at the right between the two women shown gathering their skirts, moves that indicate their preparation to join in the dancing.
138-b.
A Paris Sketch—Scene in the Champs Élysées Artist unknown (initials ‘WK’ lower left) Published by Harper’s Weekly, August 22, 1874 Wood engraving on newsprint 7 x 10 in. (17.78 x 25.4 cm)
Carousels, commonly called merry-go-rounds, had become a popular attraction at amusement parks and fairs in Germany, England and France, followed by America in the late 1870s. Wooden animals and chariots were fixed to a circular apparatus that would suspend from a central pole and rotate. The carousels were called ‘dobbies’ and were operated manually by an attendant or pulled by ponies. In 1844, Monsieur Mabille and his sons decided to make improvements to the Bal Mabille, the fashionable and popular openair dance establishment that attracted colorful attention at its balls on Saturday nights. The new additions to the gardens included a Chinese pavilion and a merry-go-round similar to the vintage carousel seen in this engraving.
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EXHIBITION CHECKLIST BY SUBJECT & THEME I. THE APPRENTICE YEARS (SHEET MUSIC COVERS) II. EARLY PORTRAIT WORK III. LEISURE TIME PURSUITS IV. RURAL AMERICA V. THE WAR YEARS VI. HOLIDAYS VII. THE SPORTING LIFE
VIII. COURTSHIP AND ROMANCE IX. SEASIDE VIEWS X. AMERICA’S YOUTH XI. THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN XII. URBANIZATION AND SOCIETY XIII. POETRY AND LITERATURE
I.
THE APPRENTICE YEARS (LITHOGRAPHS)
1. 2. 3.
Katy Darling, c. 1856 Near the Broken Stile, c. 1856-1857 Minnie Clyde, Kitty Clyde’s Sister, c. 1856-1857
II.
EARLY PORTRAIT WORKS
4. 41. 42. 46. 48. 49. 52. 53. 56. 59. 63. 67. 83.
Captain J. W. Watkins, 1857 Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, 1859 Hon. Charles Hale, Speaker of the House, Massachusetts Legislature, 1859 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1859 Mrs. Cunningham, Boston Museum, 1859 Nahum Capen, Esq., Postmaster of Boston, 1859 Fletcher Webster, Esq., Surveyor of Boston, 1859 Samuel Masury, Daguerreotypist and Photographer, 1859 Hon. James A. Pearce, U.S. Senator from Maryland, 1859 The Late Col. Samuel Jaques, 1859 Madame Laborde, The Prima Donna, 1859 Captain Robert B. Forbes, 1859 Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, 1860
138. A Parisian Ball—Dancing at the Mabille, Paris, 1867 138-b. A Paris Sketch—Scene in the Champs Élysées, 1874 139. A Parisian Ball—Dancing at the Casino, 1867 140. Homeward-Bound, 1867 163. The Artist in the Country, 1869 164. The Summit of Mount Washington, 1869 165. Summer in the Country, 1869 166. On the Road to Lake George, 1869 167. What Shall We Do Next? 1869 169. The Picnic Excursion, 1869 173. The Fishing Party, 1869 176. Another Year by the Old Clock, 1870 179. Spring Blossoms, 1870 181. A Quiet Day in the Woods, 1870 182. The Coolest Spot in New England—Summit of Mount Washington, 1870 186. The Robin’s Note, 1870 200. Under the Falls, Catskill Mountains, 1872
III.
LEISURE TIME PURSUITS
7. 22. 29. 58. 72. 84.
The Fountain on Boston Common, 1857 The Boston Common, 1858 Picnicking in the Woods, 1858 May-Day in the Country, 1859 The Sleighing Season—The Upset, 1860 The Drive in the Central Park, New York, September, 1860
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RURAL AMERICA
24. Camp Meeting Sketches: Landing at the Cape, 1858 25. Camp Meeting Sketches: Morning Ablutions, 1858 26. Camp Meeting Sketches: Cooking, 1858 27. Camp Meeting Sketches: The Tent, 1858 31. Driving Home the Corn, 1858 136. The Veteran in a New Field, 1867 168. The Last Load, 1869 172. The Straw Ride, 1869 178. Spring Farm Work—Grafting, 1870 178-b. Landscape with Cottage and Haybarn, 1641 180. The Dinner Horn, 1870 192. A Winter–Morning,—Shovelling Out, 1871 194. Lumbering in Winter, 1871 198. Making Hay, 1872 213. The Last Days of Harvest, 1873
V.
THE WAR YEARS
85. Expulsion of Negros and Abolitionists from Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1860 86. The Inaugural Procession at Washington Passing the Gate of The Capitol Grounds, 1861 87. The Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, at the Capitol, Washington, March 4, 1861 88. The Great Meeting in Union Square, New York, to Support the Government, 1861 89. The Seventy-Ninth Regiment (Highlanders) New York State Militia, 1861 90. The War—Making Havelocks for the Volunteers, 1861 91. Crew of the United States Steam-Sloop “Colorado,” Shipped at Boston, June, 1861 92. Filling Cartridges at the United States Arsenal, at Watertown, Massachusetts, 1861 93. A Night Reconnoissance (sic) on the Potomac, 1861 94. A Bivouac Fire on the Potomac, 1861 95. Great Fair Given at the City Assembly Rooms, New York, December, 1861, in Aid of the City Poor 96. Christmas Boxes in Camp—Christmas, 1861 97. The Union Cavalry and Artillery Starting in Pursuit of the Rebels Up the Yorktown Turnpike, 1862 98. Charge of the First Massachusetts Regiment on a Rebel Rifle Pit Near Yorktown, 1862 99. The Army of the Potomac—Our Outlying Picket in the Woods, 1862 100. News from the War, 1862 101. The War for the Union, 1862—A Cavalry Charge 102. The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, 1862 103. The War for the Union, 1862—A Bayonet Charge 104. The Army of the Potomac—A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty, 1862 105. Thanksgiving in Camp, 1862 106. A Shell in the Rebel Trenches, 1863 107. Pay-Day in the Army of the Potomac, 1863 108. Great Sumter Meeting in Union Square, New York, April 11, 1863 109. The Approach of the British Pirate “Alabama,” 1863 110. Home from the War, 1863 111. The Russian Ball—In the Supper Room, 1863 112. The Great Russian Ball at the Academy of Music, November 5, 1863 112-b. Grand Ball Given by the Citizens of New York to the Prince of Wales, at the Academy of Music, October 12, 1860 (M. Nevin) 113. “Any Thing for Me, if You Please?”—Post-Office of the Brooklyn Fair in Aid of the Sanitary Commission, 1864 114. Thanksgiving-Day in the Army—After Dinner: The Wish-Bone, 1864 119. Thanksgiving Day—Hanging up the Musket, 1865 120. Thanksgiving Day—The Church Porch, 1865 127. The Bright Side, 1866 189. The Tented Field, 1870 190. The Herds on Mincio’s Brink, 1871
VI. HOLIDAYS 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 66. 71. 146. 147.
Thanksgiving Day— Ways and Means, 1858 Thanksgiving Day— Arrival at the Old Home, 1858 Thanksgiving Day— The Dinner, 1858 Thanksgiving Day— The Dance, 1858 Christmas—Gathering Evergreens, 1858 The Christmas-Tree, 1858 Santa Claus and His Presents, 1858 Christmas Out of Doors, 1858 Fourth of July Scene, on Boston Common, 1859 A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 1859 Fire-Works on the Night of the Fourth of July, 1868 The Fourth of July in Tompkins Square, New York— “The Sogers Are Coming!” 1868
VII. THE SPORTING LIFE 6. 43. 44. 45. 47. 51. 62. 64. 64-b. 74. 115. 117. 121. 142. 149. 153. 188. 193. 195. 222.
The Match Between the Sophs and Freshmen— The Opening, 1857 Skating on Jamaica Pond, Near Boston, 1859 Sleighing in Haymarket Square, Boston, 1859 Sleighing on the Road, Brighton, Near Boston, 1859 Trotting on the Mill Dam, Boston, 1859 Evening Scene at the Skating Park, Boston, 1859 Cricket Players on Boston Common, 1859 Paul Morphy, The Chess Champion, 1859 Paul Morphy Playing Eight Games, 1858 Skating on the Ladies’ Skating-Pond in the Central Park, New York, 1860 Holiday in Camp—Soldiers Playing “Foot-Ball,” 1865 Our Watering-Places—Horse-Racing at Saratoga, 1865 Our National Winter Exercise—Skating, 1866 “Winter”—A Skating Scene, 1868 Jessie Remained Alone at the Table, 1868 Christmas Belles, 1869 Trapping in the Adirondacks, 1870 Deer-Stalking in the Adirondacks in Winter, 1871 Cutting a Figure, 1871 Camping Out in the Adirondack Mountains, 1874
VIII. COURTSHIP AND ROMANCE 8. 10. 30. 32. 69. 70. 162. 174.
Husking Party Finding the Red Ears, 1857 Family Party Playing at Fox and Geese, 1857 Husking the Corn in New England, 1858 The Dance after the Husking, 1858 A Cadet Hop at West Point, 1859 Fall Games—The Apple-Bee, 1859 “All in the Gay and Golden Weather” 1869 The Playmates—From Whittier’s Ballads of New England, 1869
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175. 177. 199. 221.
She Lives Where All the Golden Year Her Summer Roses Blow, 1869 George Blake’s Letter, 1870 On the Beach—Two Are Company, Three Are None, 1872 Flirting on the Seashore and on the Meadow, 1874
IX.
SEASIDE VIEWS
28. 68. 155. 170. 183. 183-b. 184. 185. 196. 197. 204. 206. 208. 210. 211. 212. 218. 220.
The Bathe at Newport, 1858 August in the Country—The Sea-Shore, 1859 Winter at Sea—Taking in Sail Off the Coast, 1869 The Beach at Long Branch, 1869 On the Bluff at Long Branch, at the Bathing Hour, 1870 Our Watering-Places—Views at Long Branch (The Sea Side). Thomas Nast, 1865 High Tide, 1870 Low Tide, 1870 At Sea—Signalling a Passing Steamer, 1871 Bathing at Long Branch—“Oh, Ain’t It Cold,” 1871 The Wreck of the “Atlantic”—Cast Up by the Sea, 1873 The Bathers, 1873 Sea-Side Sketches—A Clam-Bake, 1873 Gloucester Harbor, 1873 Ship-Building, Gloucester Harbor, 1873 “Dad’s Coming,” 1873 On the Beach at Long Branch—The Children’s Hour, 1874 Seesaw—Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1874
X.
AMERICA’S YOUTH
9. 11. 50. 60. 122. 128. 135. 137. 145. 150. 151. 187. 205. 207. 209. 216. 217. 219.
Blindman’s Buff, 1857 Coasting Out of Doors, 1857 La Petite Angelina and Miss C. Thompson, at the Boston Museum, 1859 The Wonderful Dutton Children, 1859 Boyhood’s Sports, 1866 The Midnight Coast, 1867 Swinging on a Birch-Tree, 1867 The Bird-Catchers, 1867 Watching the Crows, 1868 The Strawberry Bed, 1868 Green Apples, 1868 Chestnutting, 1870 The Noon Recess, 1873 The Nooning, 1873 “Snap-the-Whip,” 1873 Raid on a Sand-Swallow Colony—“How Many Eggs?,” 1874 Gathering Berries, 1874 Waiting for a Bite, 1874
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THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN
116. 141. 143. 144. 148. 154. 191. 214.
Our Watering-Places—The Empty Sleeve at Newport, 1865 Art Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris, 1868 Opening Day in New York, 1868 The Morning Walk—The Young Ladies’ School Promenading the Avenue, 1868 New England Factory Life—“Bell-Time,” 1868 Waiting for Calls on New-Year’s Day, 1869 The Clanking Shuttle, 1871 The Morning Bell, 1873
XII. URBANIZATION AND SOCIETY 5. 21. 23. 54. 55. 57. 61. 65. 73. 118. 152. 156. 215. 230. 231.
Corner of Winter, Washington and Summer Streets, Boston, 1857 Spring in the City, 1858 Class Day, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1858 March Winds, 1859 April Showers, 1859 The New Town of Belmont, Massachusetts, 1859 Scene on the Back Bay Lands, Boston, 1859 Cambridge Cattle Market, 1859 A Snow Slide in the City, 1860 Looking at the Eclipse, 1865 “Our Next President”—(Ulysses S. Grant), 1868 Jurors Listening to Counsel, Supreme Court, New City Hall, New York, 1869 New York Charities—St. Barnabas House, 304 Mulberry Street, 1874 The Battle of Bunker Hill—Watching the Fight from Copp’s Hill, in Boston, 1875 The Family Record, 1875
XIII. LITERATURE: ENGRAVINGS FOR POETS AND WRITERS
Twilight Stories, Published by Whittemore, Niles & Hall, Boston, 1858 Five (5) wood engravings illustrated for Mrs. Follen (Eliza Lee Cabot).
12. What the Animals Do and Say 13. Conscience 14. May Morning and New Year’s Eve 15. Piccolissima 16. Travellers’ Stories
17. 18. 19. 20.
Rural Poems Five (5) wood engravings for poet William Barnes, published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1869.
Nellie Nellie Nellie Nellie
157. 158. 159. 160. 161.
Not Far to Go Our Footsteps on the Hay Broadshoulder’d Joe The Stonen Steps The Old Clock
The Story of the Fountain, 1872 Three (3) wood engravings for the poet William Cullen Bryant, published by D. Appleton & Co., New York
201. 202. 203.
Blue-Eyed Girls Children, Ruddy-Cheeked Shouting Boys Let Loose for a Wild Holiday
The Courtin’, 1874 Seven (7) lithograph silhouette prints for poet James Russell Lowell, published by James R. Osgood & Company, Boston
Thinking Up Her Stories and Her Sisters Hearing the Story about Charlie Giving a Birthday Party for Her Sisters Calling the Old Black Hen
The Mistress of the Parsonage, 1860 Eight (8) wood engravings for the serialized novelette by author Ella Rodman (Church) published by Harper’s Weekly.
75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.
The Story of Our Darling Nellie, 1858 Four (4) wood engravings illustrated for author Rev. Increase Niles Tarbox.
123. 124. 125. 126.
An Elderly Woman Posting a Notice on a Tree “Allow Me to Examine the Young Lady” The Meeting After the Marriage Mrs. Otcheson at the Piano The Buds On the Beach The Lady in Black Meadowbrook Parsonage
Surry of Eagle’s-Nest, 1866 Four (4) wood engravings for author John Esten Cooke’s Civil War memoir. The Autumn Woods Abby’s Feat of Horsemanship Gen. Jackson’s Escape Combat Between Mordaunt and Fenwick
That Good Old Time; or, Our Fresh and Salt Tutors, 1867 Six (6) wood engravings for author Vieux Moustache (Clarence Gordon), published by Hurd & Houghton, New York
129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.
Catching the Shark Discovery of the Pirate’s Cave Passing Youngster’s Wharf on the Home Stretch Juno Lighting the Captain’s Pipe Clump in Uniform Tells His Story Fight with the Pirates
Susan Fielding, author One (1) wood engraving for author Annie Edwards published by Galaxy, 1869
223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229.
“Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown An’ peeked in thru’ the winder.” “There sot Huldy all alone, ‘Ith no one nigh to hender” “You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?” “Says he, ‘I’d better call agin.’” “An’ . . . . Wal, he up an’ kist her.” “An’ teary roun’ the lashes.” “In meetin’ come nex’ Sunday.”
171. “Come!”
EX H I BITI ON CH ECK LI ST BY SUB JECT & TH EM E
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