Rockland, ME - The collection of American art at The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, New York, includes a number of superb works by Winslow Homer in both watercolors and oils.  Homer was a particular favorite of the museum’s benefactor Bartlett Arkell, founder of Beech Nut Packing, who used his personal fortune to assemble an outstanding collection of work by American artists active around the turn of the last Century.  The exhibition is the first part of a reciprocal agreement that will see a selection from the Farnsworth’s holdings of Wyeth family paintings travel to the Arkell Museum in the summer of 2008.

Winslow Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1836 and died in Prout’s Neck, Maine, in 1910.  He began his career as an apprentice with the lithographer J.H. Bufford in Boston and then rapidly found work as a freelance illustrator for popular magazines.  By the middle of the 1870s, he had managed to free himself from this work to concentrate on painting.  He became one of the most revered figures in American art, famous for his expressive and technically brilliant watercolors and his brooding, emotionally charged paintings of the sea.

The sixteen paintings included in the Farnsworth’s exhibition from the Arkell collection clearly demonstrate the process of Homer’s artistic evolution.  An early work done in oil, Punishment for Intoxication from 1863, is a genre scene painted when Homer was an illustrator covering the Civil War for the magazine Harper’s Weekly.  The paintings he produced during this time presented war to the American public in a completely new way, concentrating on subjects of everyday life in camp rather than actual battle scenes.  Homer first experimented seriously with watercolors in 1873 during a summer spent painting in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  His success with the new medium was immediate and the sale of these very popular works ultimately provided him with enough income to give up his illustration work.  Sailing out of Gloucester (1880) and On the Cliff (1881) are two beautiful examples that are included in the show that demonstrate this total mastery of this difficult medium.

The exhibition also showcases the Farnsworth’s own collection of Homer watercolors, which date from 1873 and 1880.  The juxtaposition with the Arkell museum pieces allows for comparisons and possibly new interpretations of style and content of the Farnsworth’s paintings.  The Farnsworth is privileged to host this exhibition of the Arkell Museum’s Homers, rarely exhibited outside their home venue. . Winslow Homer: A Collector’s Passion – Works from the Arkell Museum at Canajoharie is supported in part by a grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Visit The Farnsworth Museum at : www.farnsworthmuseum.org