Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History

Friday, 14 October 2005 12:37

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA– The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute will present an innovative exhibition of Winslow Homer’s (1836-1910) work this fall. In the largest showing from the Clark’s extensive Homer holdings in decades, the exhibition offers insights into the artist’s achievement, raises questions about the variable nature of history, and documents the collection’s own institutional past. Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History will showcase 10 oil paintings, 11 watercolors, 17 drawings and etchings, and one photograph, as well as approximately 120 rarely seen wood engravings. Comprising almost 250 works by Homer, dating from 1857 to 1904, the Clark’s deep holdings provide a variety of distinctive perspectives on this important American artist. The project continues the Clark’s tradition of creating exhibitions—such as those recently devoted to Jacques-Louis David, Gustav Klimt, and J.M.W. Turner—that cast new light onto the careers of well-known artists. “The Clark’s unparalleled setting on 140 acres in a region where Homer lived and worked will enhance visitors’ appreciation of the artist’s work,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “Homer’s portrayals of the New England coast, mountains, outdoor recreation and rural life are a particularly appropriate celebration of the Clark’s 50th anniversary and the resources—natural and artistic—that distinguish the institution.” The oil paintings in the Clark collection are among Homer’s finest. As a group, they offer insight into Homer’s thematic and technical development over nearly his full career. Responses from across the hundred-plus years since their creation reveal how perspectives on Homer’s work have shifted. Among the best-known of the Clark paintings is Two Guides (1877), depicting two identifiable Adirondack guides in the wilderness. West Point, Prout’s Neck (1900) shows an even more extreme example of changing attitudes. Homer, writing in 1901, thought it “the best thing I have painted.” But one New York critic of the day called it, simply, the worst picture in that year’s Society of American Artists exhibition. Since the mid-20th century, most art historians have come to see it—as the artist thought—as one of his greatest achievements. Among the other major oil paintings featured is Undertow (1886). The Clark owns not only the painting but an unusual cache of six preparatory drawings for it, enabling visitors and scholars to take an intimate look at the artist’s design process and offering insights into how Homer developed one of his largest and most singular works. Though rarely on public view, the Clark’s watercolors by Homer are among the most popular and appealing works in the collection. The 11 watercolors cover nearly the whole span of Homer’s career. The exhibition will trace Homer’s development, the collecting priorities of founder Sterling Clark, and the rise of the status of watercolors in the American art world. Highlights include the simple Lemon (1876), the glowing Adirondack scene An October Day (1889), and Fish and Butterflies (1900). A group of etchings, heliotypes, and chromolithographs by or after Homer reveal technologies the artist used to make his art more accessible to the collecting public.

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