Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American painter and illustrator of the nineteenth century, best known for his pictures of the sea. He was born in Boston on 24 February 1836 and died at Prouts Neck on 29 September 1910.

Homer is counted among the foremost painters of nineteenth-century America and among the leading figures of American art as a whole. The Art Institute of Chicago calls him one of the most influential American painters of that century. Besides painting, he worked as an illustrator, a printmaker and a photographer, and his work is associated with realism.

According to the Art Institute, Homer painted both the leisure pursuits of the upper class and the power and beauty of nature. After 1882 his paintings turned almost entirely to the struggle between people and nature. Other works linked to his name include Two Girls with Sunbonnets in a Field, Corn Husking, The Morning Bell, The Bean Picker, Sunlight and Shadow, The Butterfly and Sandy Beach with Breakers.

His work is held by a great many museums, among them the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Clark Art Institute, the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’Orsay and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

The Herring Net, the painting shown here, is oil on canvas and dates from 1885. It was made at Prouts Neck, the place where Homer later died. Fishermen haul in a large catch of herring while they keep their boat steady on heavy, rolling water. The canvas measures 76.5 by 122.9 centimeters and is part of the Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, in the museum’s Arts of the Americas department.