Individuals >> Homer, Winslow (1836-1910)

Artist.

Winslow Homer opened his first studio in Boston at the age of twenty-one. In 1858, he started to publish illustrations in Harper’s Weekly. One year later, he moved to New York City and opened another studio. It is around this time that Homer most likely became involved with the Pfaffians. The extent of his relationship with individual members of the group is not certain but, according to George Lathrop, he was a member of the “Pfaff group” that published the Saturday Press (832).

During the Civil War, Homer traveled to Virginia and his sketches of battles and army life were published by Harper’s Weekly. Louis Starr asserts that "at twenty-six, Winslow Homer of Harper’s Weekly had a penchant for depicting camp life exactly as he found it" (111). His choice of war as the subject of his paintings remained constant even after he left the battlefields behind and resumed his life in New York City. During this period he painted Sharpshooter on Picket Duty, The Last Goose at Yorktown, Home, Sweet Home, and Rations.

In the 1870s Homer switched his artistic focus from elements of war to those of the natural world and American life. According to Starr, "Homer’s moody genius in oils and water color made him the pre-eminent American seascapist" (354). In 1876 he began his “Adirondack pictures” with The Two Guides and, toward the end of the decade, he painted “several pictures of negro life in Virginia” (Downes, “Winslow Homer"). When he died in 1910, Homer left behind an unfinished work, Shoot the Rapids and numerous paintings and watercolors that are still in demand today.

References & Biographical Resources

Downes, William Howe. "Winslow Homer." Dictionary of American Biography. Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2006. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC. [more about this work]

Lathrop, George Parsons. "The Literary Movement in New York." Harper's New Monthly Magazine. 1886. 813-833. [more about this work]

A painter. Mentioned as a member of the "'Pfaff group,' which assisted in the publication of the Saturday Press. [pages: 832]

Starr, Louis Morris. Bohemian Brigade; Civil War Newsmen in Action. New York: Knopf, 1954. 367 p. [more about this work]

Of the artists who depicted the Civil War for the newspapers and magazines of the time, Starr writes that "at twenty-six, Winslow Homer of Harper's Weekly had a penchant for depicting camp life exactly as he found it." Homer was one of several writers Harper's commissioned to cover the war (111).

Starr uses Homer's pay as an example of the treatment of artists and correspondents during the war: "Financially, artists were no better off than correspondents. Winslow Homer commanded the top rate from Harper's, sixty dollars for a double page spread" (254). According to a footnote, Homer worked intermittently at the front for about eight months (254).

Homer and Nast are described by Starr as the members of "the artists' contingent of the Bohemian brigade" who gained the "widest renown." According to Starr, "Homer's moody genius in oils and water color made him the pre-eminent American seascapist" (354). [pages: 111,254,254n,354]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume III, Grinnwell-Lockwood. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

Homer was elected an associate of the National academy in 1864, and an academician the following year. [pages: 246]