Winslow Homer is an American equivalent of the European, Gustave Courbet. Independent of one another they each arrived at similar artistic solutions. Extremely realistic in conception, their painting remains an art of great feeling. Of his own method Homer said, "When I have selected the thing carefully, I paint it exactly as it appears." Thus, in addition to a desire to paint things as they are, the importance of selection and arrangement is also apparent. Homer had a strong sense of design and pattern and an even stronger feeling for the power of the land and the sea. The relation of man to nature appears in his pictures of farmers, fishermen, sailors; men who come into direct and constant contact with her. Courbet too was affected by the majesty of nature and produced a number of powerful sea paintings.

Descendant of an old Yankee family, Homer was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He spent a good part of his childhood in boating and fishing. With the exception of two years as apprentice to a commercial lithographer, a few classes at the Academy of Design, and some private lessons from a French painter, Homer taught himself by the simple process of painting from life. More than anything else, he was probably helped by a long period of magazine illustrating, for this meant constant application to simple everyday scenes.

His early work in Harper's Weekly, like most journalistic illustration of the time, is still rather Victorian. During the Civil War, however, he was sent to the front to cover the human interest side of the conflict. Now a real force and directness emerged. Dealing with the duller side of camp life, the routine tasks, the horseplay and rough jokes of the soldiers, he laid the basis for some of his first important works.

Shortly after the war, Homer did a number of paintings derived from these experiences including Prisoners from the Front, and Rainy Day in Camp. Here an acute sense of observation is combined with a quiet melancholy. The heavy accents move from the lower left across the picture to the upper right; a lighter diagonal may be traced from the upper left to the lower right. The soldiers gathered about their fire remain the emotional and visual center of the picture, but they are balanced by the rest of camp life.

During the same period he did an elaborate series of genre pictures, his own version of a part of the American scene. He visited various vacation resorts and painted elegant ladies and gentlemen at their sports. These works of the 1870's are somewhat similar to the vacation scenes of the French Impressionists, but they are much more sober in technique. The French pictures are joyous in color and atmospheric in quality. Those of Homer are darkly painted and stress the seriousness of the people involved, even when they are doing something unimportant.

Breezing Up (also known as A Fair Wind and Father and Sons on a Boat Trip) (below) shows a form that suggests the earlier art of Daumier and Courbet. Frenchmen of this later period, like Renoir and Manet, emphasize the charm of their subjects and the delicate play of light. Homer is more concerned with building up a serious mood and a solid composition. The figures here sit or lie back with a calm solemnity characteristic of Homer's art. The boat swings in curvilinear fashion out of the lower right-hand corner to the upper left, outlining the figures against the sky. This leftward movement is balanced by the figures themselves which move to the right.

His experiences in England in 1881-82 turned Homer, once and for all, to a study of the sea and its power. In 1884 he settled permanently at Prout's Neck, a lonely spot on the coast of Maine. Except for occasional trips to the north woods, to Florida or the West Indies, he remained here for the rest of his life. His deep and abiding love of the sea appears in the many majestic interpretations of her moods. Human beings become less and less important in these works; they are vehicles for his own lonely and austere emotions.

During the winters when he went south, he executed the most famous series of watercolors in the history of American painting. The Tornado, Bahamas represents a constant theme in the work of this period. Under ominous, dark skies the tropical storm comes up without warning to lash the palm trees into a frenzy. The greenish clouds go racing by, and the palm branches bend back to follow. Everything accents the motion to the right: the flat arrangement of the houses, the open shutters, the chimney, the tight little flag whipping in the gale. Homer has undoubtedly been stirred by the sight and has recorded his excitement. Emotive quality has been combined with the careful arrangement of various forms and has created an effective painting.