Winslow Homer is best known for his seascapes, energetically capturing scenes of seamen battling against the elements. But that was just half of his career.
Starting out as an artist, Homer created engravings for nationally circulating magazines, depicting men at war, women at work, children at play, holiday rituals, seasonal frolics, political milestones and the differences and similarities between the upper and lower classes.
In 18 years as an illustrator, Homer created about 220 engravings. Recently, Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury received a gift of 100 of these engravings from David and Ann Jones of Fairfield. Eighty-five pieces from the Jones gift are on exhibit through Dec. 3, with subjects ranging from grisly Civil War battlefield imagery to peaceful sights of daydreaming women and children.
“The drawings in his early years have a distinct look. The early drawings are usually very crowded with figures. They have a short dimensional space and a lot of activity,” says Cynthia Roznoy, curator at the Mattatuck. ‘Later, he becomes more confident in his art-making. We see images that are more simplified. The shapes are monumental. His composition is more sophisticated.”
Homer went into lithography by chance, Roznoy says.
“He was 19 years old. He didn’t go to college. His father’s friend ran a lithography business, so he became an apprentice lithographer and he learned printmaking. By the time he was 25 he had already made prints for Buford’s, a Boston weekly, and then for Harper’s Weekly.”
The exhibit is divided into themes: The Civil War, College Days, Women, Children at Play, At Work, Outdoor Sport and Winter Holiday. What’s surprising is how often very disparate themes seem to depict the same things. The boys scouting for prey in the fields in “Bird Catchers” seem to be training to become the snipers Homer depicted in his Civil War images. The Army of the Potomac soldiers engaging in a bayonet charge seem no less desperate than the soldiers lining up for their paychecks, or the soldiers, in their down time, playing football.
By comparison, the Harvard men cavorting on the quad in one of Homer’s college images seem ludicrous seen next to the Civil War fighting men. These top-hatted youths have little in common with the soldiers on the battlefields, more resembling the scraggly boys playing snap-the-whip across the gallery. One of the Harvard men has landed flat on his butt, an undignified posture when seen near another image of a soldier being crushed under the hooves of a charging steed. In a print nearby, an image of men and women reporting for work at a New England factory make a mockery of those time-wasting collegians.
Homer’s focus crossed gender boundaries. Men, women and children all run for cover when an awning lets loose an avalanche of snow, and they tumble out of a downed carriage. Both men and women are seen at work and at play: fishing, shoveling a path through shoulder-high snow, roaming on the beach, climbing Mt. Washington, enjoying a hayride. A corn-husking bee is an occasion for both toil and romance, and a college dance is both an opportunity for a vivacious woman to flirt and for a shy woman to sulk.
Homer’s sensitivity to the difference in social classes can be seen in the exhibit’s selection. Children’s games, not requiring any rarefied equipment, are accessible to kids in both natty clothes and rags. One of the soldiers waiting for his pay is African-American.
One remarkable piece, “Thanksgiving Day 1960,” is subtitled “The Two Great Classes of Society,” showing both “those who have more dinners than appetite” and “those who have more appetite than dinners.” Another piece is fascinating in that it depicts the New York City of 1859: The 5th Avenue family enjoys an elegant home and horse-drawn carriage, while the 59th Street family makes do with a hovel and a sleigh pulled by a goat.
The exhibit is enhanced by paintings on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven and the New Britain Museum of American Art.
“WINSLOW HOMER: AMERICAN LIFE” is at Mattatuck Museum, 144 West Main St. in Waterbury, until Dec. 3. mattmuseum.org.
