The graphic world of Winslow Homer.

PositionUSA Yesterday - Biography

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"IN A PLACE BY HIMSELF: THE GRAPHIC WORLD OF WINSLOW HOMER" provides a broad view of Homer's career as a graphic artist, ranging from his early work as a lithographic apprentice in Boston to the monumental, late etchings that were both inspired by and completed in his home and studio on Prouts Neck, Maine. His images capture the characters and contradictions of 19th-century America, points out Jessica Skwire Routhier, director of Maine's Saco Museum.

Homer, who died a century ago and is known today as one of the country's greatest painters, began his career as a printmaker. Born in Boston in 1836, he started as an apprentice with lithographer John H. Bufford in 1855. At Bufford's shop, Homer produced drawings for city views, book illustrations, sheet music, and more. Though much of his work from this period is unsigned, scholar and Homer specialist David Tatham securely has identified the artist's hand in the illustrations for the book Ottawa Scenery (1855) by William Stanley Hunter, plus several editions of sheet music, among other items. Rarely-seen examples of these pieces originating at Bufford's shop will be on view.

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After completing his two-year apprenticeship, Homer relocated to New York and soon began a decades-long career as an illustrator for the "pictorial press"--a term used to describe illustrated magazines, newspapers, and journals from the second half of the 19th century. From this point forward, most of his compositions were reproduced as wood engravings, a type of block printing that could achieve a high level of detail and be mass-produced easily. Homer created the original drawings, either on transfer paper or directly on the wood surface, for skilled carvers to incise into a printing block.

Beginning in 1861, Homer sewed as a Civil War correspondent for Harper's Weekly magazine. Before field photography was employed widely, and certainly before publishers had established a way to mass-reproduce photographs in their publications, Homer's illustrations provided the American public with a unique window onto the front lines. From electrifying battle scenes such as "A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty" (1862) and "The Charge of the First Massachusetts Regiment" (1862) to poignant scenes of soldiers at rest like "Winter Quarters in Camp" (1863), Homer's images communicated to a broad populace the violence, heroism, grief, and import of this divisive conflict.

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