Winslow Homer was enthralled by the immense grandeur of nature and wanted to convey that sensation onto his compositions through the brilliance of his expressive brushwork. Nature’s force is both grand and everlasting in Homer Winslow’s paintings and nonchalantly disinterested in the dramas of the human condition.
After his apprenticeship in 1857, he started his own workshop. Homer swiftly rose to prominence, making pieces for publications in Boston and New York, but he soon revealed his actual aspirations: becoming a painter.
Despite his popularity from his wartime sketches, Homer continued to create commercial works until 1875, when he shifted his focus to being an oil and watercolor artist.
Homer came to France with his painting in 1867 for the first of two voyages to Europe and stayed in Paris for over a year. Here, he was inspired by The Barbizon School, a scape style that gained prominence in America in the 1860s.
Although Homer continued to exhibit his work in New York for the remainder of his career, he elected not to reside there when he returned to America. He died at Prout’s Neck in 1910 at the age of 74.
Homer revolutionized genre painting into powerful expressions of human taste, and in his later works uncovered an America that impressionist niceties and American renaissance fantasy completely disregarded.