Winslow Homer

BORN AT Boston, Massachusetts, Winslow Homer served his apprenticeship there as a lithographer, but following the outbreak of the American Civil War he accompanied the Union forces and contributed sketches from the battlefront to Harper’s Weekly as well as executing his earliest full-scale paintings, Home Sweet Home and Prisoners from the Front. He spent two years (1881–83) in England, mainly at Tynemouth, painting nautical subjects. Following his return to the USA he continued to paint the sea — apart from occasional genre subjects such as The Fox Hunt.

During the last two decades of his life he lived at Prouts Neck on the coast of Maine, where he concentrated on watercolours of fishermen in the eternal struggle against the elements. Occasional forays to Florida, the Bahamas and Bermuda provided more exotic material but invariably with a maritime theme.

Excerpt from Art. The World of Art, from Aboriginal to American Pop, Renaissance Masters to Postmodernism.