Winslow Homer: crosscurrents

Abstract

Long celebrated as the quintessential New England regionalist, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) in fact brushed a much wider canvas, traveling throughout the Atlantic world and frequently engaging in his art with issues of race, imperialism, and the environment. This publication focuses, for the first time, on the watercolors and oil paintings Homer made during visits to Bermuda, Cuba, coastal Florida, and the Bahamas. In particular, The Gulf Stream (1899), an iconic painting long considered the most consequential of his career, reveals the artist's lifelong fascination with struggle and conflict. The book also includes Homer's depictions of rural life and the sea, in which he grapples with the violence of nature, as well as his Civil War and Reconstruction paintings of the 1860s and 1870s, which explore the unresolved effects of the war on the landscape, soldiers, and the formerly enslaved. Recognizing the artist's keen ability to distill complex issues in his work, Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents upends popular conceptions and convincingly argues that Homer's work resonates with the challenges of the present day. Exhibition: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (11.04.-31.07.2022) / National Gallery, London, UK (10.09.2022 - 08.01.2023).

Contents

Directors' foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors to the catalogue -- Lenders to the exhibition -- Reconsidering Winslow Homer : methods and meanings / Sylvia Yount -- Frontier, ocean, empire : vistas of expansion in Winslow Homer's United States / Daniel Immerwahr -- Plates : Civil War and Reconstruction -- "The various colors and types of negroes" : Winslow Homer learns to paint race / Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw -- Plates : waterside and rescue -- "These works are real" : Winslow Homer and Europe / Christopher Riopelle -- Plates : along the Gulf Stream -- Crosscurrents : conflict, nature, and mortality in Winslow Homer's art / Stephanie L. Herdrich -- Plates : nature and mortality -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index -- Photography credits.