LITMIR.BIZ

      However, during the 1870s some of the homosexual suspicions were dispelled by an apparent romance that brewed up between Homer and a young amateur artist, Helena de Kay. The relationship began shortly after he returned from his two-year sojourn in Paris. She was a student at the Women’s Art School at the Cooper Union in New York. He likely made her acquaintance through her brother Charles, who occupied Homer’s studio during the artist’s Paris trip. When they met is not clear, but he painted The Bridle Path in 1868 and the resemblance between the rider and Helena is striking and was recognised by several friends.

      Seven letters written by Homer to Helena exist and they indicate more than a passing interest or platonic friendship: “Miss Helena, if you would like to see a large drawing on wood, and will come to my studio on Monday or Tuesday, I shall have a chance to see you. Why can’t you make some designs and let me send them to Harpers for you, they will gladly take anything fresh. And I will see that you draw them on the block all right.”

      Sadly, the “Come up and see my block of wood” ploy failed to work and Miss Helena demurred. Winslow’s letters then took on a really needy tone, but all to no avail: “Dear Miss Helena, You know you were to let me know when it would be agreeable for me to call at your studio. Having no word from you I suppose you have made other arrangements.” Still later, his note became an entreaty, “My work this winter will be good or very bad. The good work will depend on your coming to see me once a month – at least – Is this asking too much? Truly yours, Winslow Homer.”[6]

      But the lady wanted nothing to do with him, so the door clanged shut on future amorous pursuits and he retreated to the disreputable collection of the finest illustrators in New York, the Tile Club, and wallowed in manly camaraderie. The club met frequently to debate art, swap ideas and plan outings to paint. Its membership included such notables as William Merritt Chase, Augustus Saint Gaudens and Arthur Quartley. Homer endured the nickname ‘The Obtuse Bard’.

      With a possible eye on the success of Eastman Johnson, during the 1870s Winslow Homer plunged into a series of genre paintings, choosing, like Johnson, to observe the ordinary lives of common people. He granted elegance to the most basic of pursuits. Considering the level of his skills, this choice of less than uplifting subjects confounded both his champions and critics. In 1872, his painting Snap the Whip was displayed in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It shows a line of shabbily dressed boys playing a game, running and tumbling at full speed in an open field. Behind them are an equally shabby barn and a diagonal horizon of two intersecting hills that complements the diminishing line of boys as they run across the width of the painting. Author and social critic Henry James wrote of Homer: “We frankly confess that we detest his subjects… he has chosen the least pictorial range of scenery and civilisation; he has resolutely treated them as if they were pictorial… and, to reward his audacity, he has incontestably succeeded.”

      It was also in the 1870s that Homer took up watercolours seriously and for the rest of his days rarely went into the field without his water-based paints and brushes. He explored the games and pensive moments of children and young women, perfecting his watercolour technique for what would later become his signature works in the medium.

      Today, through the use of x-rays, the fluorescence spectrometer, infrared micro spectrophotometer and the Raman laser microscope, a team at the Chicago Art Institute has revealed the secrets of Homer’s seemingly casual approach to watercolour. The medium does not usually allow many changes once committed to the paper, but Homer planned his paintings very carefully, drawing every feature in pencil before adding colour. Even after the colour was on the page, he used sandpaper to create hazy skies and fog effects. A sharp knife blade scraped away pigment to reduce intensity and a wet brush applied to already dried pigment created foam on waves and surf at the shore.

      Winslow Homer, Two Figures by the Sea, 1882.

      Oil on canvas, 50.2 × 88.9 cm.

      Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.

      Watercolour is subject to fading over the years and some of his paintings have lost degrees of colour where the originals held tints of sunset orange that added to the overall atmosphere and fading blues have been replaced by bald skies. Some of this fading is due to the use of ‘fugitive’ pigments. Many artists have been guilty of seeing the immediate effect of a colour without a thought about its longevity. Homer employed some colours that, over time, have shifted drastically from the original, or have disappeared altogether. Among these are a colour discovered in antiquity by the ancient Romans and Aztecs called ‘Carmine Red’. It is made of the dried crushed husks of the cochineal bug that lives in colonies on the pads of prickly pear cacti and is cultivated in Mexico and India. It must be mixed with tin oxide to become permanent in fibres. Another was ‘Indian Yellow’, actually created from magnesium euxanthate – the magnesium salt of euxanthic acid, which is the chemical name for the urine of cows that have been fed mangoes.[7]

      He did not baulk at making changes in compositions to enhance the story. In the painting After the Hurricane, which shows a man stretched out on the beach amid the wreckage of his small boat, Homer’s original concept had the man’s outstretched arm in the air. X-rays show he overdrew that idea, laying the arm on the sand and leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether the man was dead or not.[8]

      Winslow Homer, Rocky Coast, 1883–1900.

      Oil

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