Winslow Homer's Watercolors: A Study in Theme and Style

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) took up watercolor only after having been a professional illustrator for more than fifteen years and a respected painter in oils for a decade. His output in the medium was prolific--close to 700 works. In watercolor he first captured new subjects, experimented with color, and voiced his interests in light, atmosphere, and design. Whereas his oils were carefully planned and completely worked statements with a sense of solidity and permanence, the watercolors were a more immediate utterance. Distinguished by seemingly effortless execution, the apparent ease of his technique disguises the deliberateness of his method and the extraordinary control he had over the liquid medium. Created over a period of more than thirty years, between 1873 and 1905, during working vacations in places he loved--the New England seaside, the Adirondacks, Quebec, Bahamas, Bermuda, and Florida--the watercolors are unsurpassed for their directness, luminosity, and economy of means. Style and subject, method and meaning, were bound together, in response to places visited and seasons experienced. The dissertation traces the developments of Homer's watercolors through each stage of his career. His working methods, techniques, and materials are discussed in the context of certain details of iconography or in repeated themes and sequences, many of which reveal a preoccupation with death. To view the range of Homer's watercolors, is to follow closely the development of a spontaneous and poetic sensibility that otherwise found no place in his art. In watercolor, this reserved, intensely private man expressed a more intimate and sensual self.