TH E %ULF STREAM TH E METROP OLITAN MUSEUM O F A RT n n d ted H 1 9 nc s h i h inc s w . Sig ed a d a ; omer , 8 9 . Can vas , i he g , he ide WINSLOW HOMER %ENYON Cox NEW YOR% PRIVATELY PRINTED MCM% IV ”MO Co r h 1 1 py ig t 9 4. by Frederic Fairchdd Sh erman TO ITS F I RST READ ER PH IL I P LITTELL W H OSE CRITIC I SM AND AD VICE ON MATTERS O E STYLE W ERE I NVALUAB LE TO M E H B % F F T I S O O I S A ECTI ONATELY INSCRIB ED . PREFACE ' For the facts and dates ofHomer s life Iam indebt ed to “The Life and Works ofWinslow Homer by ll D Mifflin : Wi iam Howe ownes , Houghton Com 1 1 1 . pany , 9 From this book . which I have accepted th e nl sub edt as o y authority on the j . I have also bor ' “ rowed a few quotations from John W . Beatty s In % ’ ro r f t ducfto y Note and rom Homer s own letters . ’ For the interpretation I have put upon the facts , ' and for the attempt at a critical estimate of Homer s . t is art , I alone am responsible Upon the validi y ofth estimate my little book must depend for its excuse for being . But whil e the opin ions expressed are my own they must Often coincide with those expressed by r s did : other w iter . Ifthey not the book might be orig inal but would almost certainly be erroneous . I think s hi I have aid not ng because others have said it , but I have not had the vanity to refrain from saying any: s thing becau e it had been already said , or to attempt novelty at the possible cost oftruth . x %ENYON Co . ILLUSTRATIO NS The Gulf Stream Fron tispiece h l 2 New England Country Sc oo Page 4, The Berry Pickers 24 A Voice from the Cliff 3 2 The West Wind 3 2 The Herring Net Hound and Hunter ff s‘t High Cli . Coa ofMaine A Summer Night The Fox Hunt The Lookout Early Morning After Storm at WINSLOW H O MER WINSLOW HO MER PART O NE HE painters of America who have gained a certain definiten ess and per: — man en ce ofreputation those whose names are as well known to dealers and c oll edtors as are the names of leading foreign masters and whose pictures have an established and increasing commer= Cial — i i value belong . almost w thout except on , to the generation which reached its majority shortly before r the Civil War . The centu y and a halfofpainting in America may be roughly divided in to three periods ’ al fir st s ofapproximately equ length . The ofour paint ers to attain any considerable eminence were purely English in origin and in training , and the earliest of st them were . on the whole , the be ; so that the first period may be called that ofthe decline ofthe English school inAmerica . The second periodwas that ofthe slow evolution ofa native school , and this school was onthe verge ofits highest achievementwhen the third or present period began ; the period ofa new foreign — — in fluen c e mainly French and ofthe effort to adapt a technic learned in the schools ofcontinental Europe to the expression ofAmerican thought and American feeling . We cannot yet tell how many ofour paint I I ers belonging wholly to this last period may achieve s lr a la ting fame . Those who seem a eady to have o f o f r achieved it are the time transition , and thei work marks the culmination ofthe native school and f fl f the beginning o the new in uence rom abroad . f Their birth dates all very near together . The old of ll 1 822 est them , Fu er and Hunt , were born in and i l 1 2 1 82 res edt ve m 8 . 4 p y, and Inness ca e in 5 Then , f st 1 8 a ter a gap ofnine years , we have Whi ler in 34 , LaFar e 1 8 1 8 6 g in 35 and , in the one year 3 , Homer M artin W an t Vedder sub edt , y , , and the j ofthis book, Winslow Homer . The mere list ofnames is enough to Show the double nature ofthe work accomplished by the men ofthis generation . At the outset we have t o f Cou= the sharp contrast be ween Hunt, the pupil f o f ll ture and the riend Mi et , a teacher and a great fl ff t s a in uence if a somewhat ine ec ual arti t , m king ‘ m 1 8 his 1 8 s hi self, from 55 to death in 79 , the apo tle of ff ’ that Barbizon school which was to a ect , in greater f ’ orless degree , so many others o the group ; and Fuller , his Deerfield f and emer working byhimselfon arm , g ing from Obscurity in 1 876 as the artistic contempo ’ rary of Hunt s pupils and of the young men whom ’ Hunt s preaching had sent to Paris for their education . s t And the same contra t is repea ed , in even sharper st form , between Whi ler and Homer; between the brilliant cosmopolitan wh o spent but a few years of his infancy and a few more ofhis youth in his own ' u u ; co ntry , and the recl se of Prout s Neck between m st the dainty sy phoni , whose art is American only 1 2 I because t is not quite English and not quite French , and the Sturdy realist who has given us the mos’t ’ is s : purely native work, as it perhaps the mo t power fiil i n . , yet produced America Winslow Homer came of pure New England S di c f tock , being re tly descended rom one Captain John Homer who sailed from Englan d in his own ’ ship and settled in Boston in the middle o f the seven teen th . v century His father Charles Sa age Homer , ’ In s was a hardware merchant Bo ton , where Wins r 2 th 1 8 6 low was born on Februa y 4 , 3 , and his moth fr er , Henrietta Maria Benson , came om Bucksport , f Maine , a town named a ter her maternal grandfather “ She i s said to have had a pretty talent for painting fl I I : owers n watercolors , and her son may have n h rit d e e his artistic proclivities from her . There were probably other seafaring men than the firSt Capt ’ s ‘ John among the Homer ance try , and the artist s uncle , James Homer owned a barque and cruised to the West Indies . We cannot doubt that the love of salt water was even more deeply ingrained in Win: wa s slow Homer than the love ofart , though it not to f n show itsel u til rather late in life . 1 8 2 In 4 , when Homer was six years old , the family removed to Cambridge , and there his boyhood was S l spent . There was til much of the country vill age his two about Cambridge , and Homer and brothers if o f E lived the healthy l e rural New ngland , fishing , i boat ng , swimming , playing rough games and going ’ to school . An interesting memorial of this time is 1 3 ' s’ n Homer s earliest exi ti g drawing , reproduced in ' “ William Howe Down es s Life and Works o f the s arti t , under the title of The Beetle and the Wedge . It represents Winslow' s elder brother Charles and his cousin George Benson holding the younger broth: er , Arthur , spread eagle fashion by the arms and legs and about to swing hi s weight violently against the rear of another innocent youngster squatting on all fours in the grass . In the lives of artists one expedts as a matter of o f I s course , tales precocious talent, but t is eldom that such evidence of their veracity can be brought for: d f ward . Here is a boy ofeleven rawing rom life , or f rom memory ofpersonal observation , a composition of four figures in complicated foreshortenings ; indi cating their several adtion s and expressions with ad s mirable truth and economy ; and, with a few line s and scratches of shade , placing them in their etting n of sunlit pasture and dista t hillside . Ofcourse the i draw ng is but a sketch and, equally of course , the ability to make such a sketch does not imply that of carrying it farther . It was long before Homer coul d put into the form ofa definite and completed work of is art what here suggested , but as a sketch , as a rapid s notation ofthe essentials ofsomething seen , it i such s’t as Homer , or any other arti , might , at any period i . ofhis career , have been will ng to sign The essential ’ st an d : Winslow Homer , the ma er of weight move is . ment , already here in implication Ifmany ofthe heap of yo uthfii l drawings which the artist pre: I 4 o f if nl is no importance , and that , o y one is a trained : speaker , it matters little whether or not one has any illuStrato r muSt thing to say .