Presidents of the USA from 1969-1921

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
James A. Garfield (1881)
Chester Arthur (1881-1885)
Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)

All our artists with dates of birth and death.

1. La Farge  1835-1910
2. Homer  1836-1910
3. Mary Cassatt:  1844-1926
4. Ryder  1847-1917
5. Chase: 1849-1916
6. Thayer  1849 - 1921
7. Dewing: 1851- 1938
8. Twachtman: 1853- 1902
9. Sargent:  1856-1925
10. Hassam: 1859- 1935
11. Tanner: 1859- 1937

Ten American Painters and other societies.

Ten American Painters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ten in 1908

The Ten American Painters, generally known as The Ten, resigned from the Society of American Artists in late 1897

 to protest the commercialism of that group's exhibitions, and their circus-like atmosphere. The Society had broken 

away from the National Academy of Design in New York City twenty years earlier, in a progressive movement led by 

Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Winslow Homer.

The Ten were Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, Robert Reid, Willard Metcalf, 

Frank Weston Benson, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Joseph DeCamp, and Edward Simmons. 

Abbott Handerson Thayer and Winslow Homer were asked to join the group when it was formed; 

however, they refused.

 When Twachtman died in 1902, William Merritt Chase joined in his place.

All of The Ten were active in either New York City or Boston. They were generally considered exponents

 of Impressionism and established in their careers. In their charter, they agreed to resign from the Society

 and hold their own annual exhibition, protesting the Society’s perceived emphasis on “too much business and

 too little art.” For its part, the Society claimed it was “liberal” with dissenters,

 but some members felt it should stand for “traditional art” and not vacillate with each passing art movement.

 It was content to let dissenters leave rather than try to appease them.

The Ten held annual exhibitions for twenty years; eventually the group fell apart from deaths

other movements which came to the public’s attention.

The Society of American Artists was an American artists group.
It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately
 meet their needs, and was too conservative.

The group began meeting in 1874 at the home of Richard Watson Gilder and his wife Helena de Kay Gilder.

 In 1877 they formed the Society, and subsequently held annual art exhibitions.

Some of the first members included sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose work had been rejected from 

a National Academy exhibition in 1877; painters Walter Shirlaw, Robert Swain Gifford, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 

John LaFarge, Julian Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, and Alexander Helwig Wyant; 

and designer and artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. 

Eventually most of the best-known artists of the day joined the group, and many held dual membership 

with the National Academy.

The cycle of conservative to progressive repeated in 1897 when the Ten American Painters group broke away 

from the Society of American Artists. The Society ultimately merged with the National Academy in 1906.

Notable members of the National Academy Of Design

William Merritt Chase Thomas Eakins

Winslow Homer

Augustus Saint-Gaudens John Singer Sargent Henry Ossawa Tanner Louis Comfort Tiffany

The Tile Club was a group of 31 notable New York painters, sculptors, and architects 

- including Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, J. Alden Weir, 

John Henry Twachtman, Ehilu Vedder, Edwin Austin Abbey, Arthur Burdett Frost, 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens,  and Stanford White - who met together between 1877 and 1887. 

The club formed for purpose of camaraderie, painting on ceramic tiles and traveling 

together on group excursions and sketching trips. 

They banded together to promote, in America, issues and concepts about aesthetics and 

the fine and decorative arts that were prevalent within the British Aesthetic Movement. 

But the club also championed American art in general - and did much to popularize 

plein air painting and the Impressionist style.

Gilded Age, a summary

Wealthy industrialists eager to acquire culture began to patronize native artists who had achieved international recognition. John Singer Sargent and Cecilia Beaux created portraits of these new patrons, while John LaFarge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens made luxurious adornments for their homes. One group of painters - including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, and Henry Ossawa Tanner - responded especially to the fascination with exotic mid-eastern, Egyptian or "Oriental" cultures that characterized this age of international imperialism. The educated and refined aspect of Gilded Age culture is expressed in Renaissance-inspired paintings by Abbott Handerson Thayer and Mary Cassatt. Romantic literary works by visionary Albert Pinkham Ryder symbolize the idealized strivings of this generation, while the rugged landscapes of Winslow Homer emblemize the struggle and conflict that marked this period of contending social and industrial forces.

The phrase "the Gilded Age" arose from the title of a 1873 popular novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner about America's "golden road to fortune" that contrasted shallow materialism with the golden age of Greece. The period from the 1870s to World War I became identified as the Gilded Age. Throughout the era the United States was on the rise to power and taking a place on the international stage politically, economically, and culturally. Against this backdrop a new and important collaboration developed between wealthy American patrons and artists, based on European Renaissance ideals.

"Great ambition characterized this period in America," said Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Artists and patrons rose to new heights, as the 1876 Centennial engendered a strong sense of national pride and eagerness to match Europe's aristocracies." (Broun is a KU alumna and former acting director of the Spencer Museum.)

A heightened sophistication permeates the portraits in the exhibition. Society portraitist John Singer Sargent posed "Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler" (1893), (see left) whose family was heir to John Jacob Astor's fortune, flanked by old-master paintings. Cecilia Beaux portrayed her brother-in-law Henry Sturgis Drinker, a hard-driving corporate railroad lawyer, as relaxed and casual in "Man with the Cat" (1898), resplendent in a cream-colored suit and pink shirt.

This was also an international age, when artists and their patrons traveled widely to visit exotic cultures. Louis Comfort Tiffany's "Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco" (1873) signals this interest and foreshadows the artist's later development of opulent interiors

Vast fortunes amassed during the Industrial Revolution led to a wave of elegant townhouses, and these were settings for fine collections and decorations. "Apollo with Cupids" (1880-82), a decorative panel by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John LaFarge, once adorned the dining room of Cornelius Vanderbilt's Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City. The work is embellished with African mahogany, hammered bronze, colored marbles, mother-of-pearl and ivory.

(...)

Paintings by the visionary artist Albert Pinkham Ryder(...) are each a story of betrayal and redemption based on literary sources. The complex technique Ryder used causes his paintings to be unusually fragile, so the museum rarely lends his works. Special humidity controlled packing and shipping technology allows these works to be shared throughout America.

Winslow Homer, like Ryder, probed beneath the glitter of the Gilded Age to explore undercurrents of anxiety. "High Cliff, Coast of Maine" (1894) is among the greatest of Homer's late seascapes, a canvas filled with waves pounding on a rocky shore. These opposing forces of nature resonated in a society struggling with economic instability, labor unrest, and controversial new theories of Darwin, Freud, and others. The intimate world of women and children at home, seen in "An Interlude" (1907) by William Sergeant Kendall, offered refuge.

Artists and their patrons shared an ambition to present American civilization as having grown past provincialism to full maturity, equal to Europe's much-admired culture. Evocations of music abound, as in Childe Hassam's woman at a piano called "Improvisation" (1899) and Thomas Wilmer Dewing's allegorical "Music" (about 1895). Spiritual themes -- countering fears that Americans were overly materialistic -- appear in Abbott Handerson Thayer's four paintings in the exhibition, including the ever-popular "Angel" (1887).

Overall, the ambitions of individual artists and patrons, and of the nation at large, combined to make the period of the 1870s through the 1910s one of enormous achievement in the visual arts. "This thrilling exhibition truly captures the elegant, idealistic side of life and art in Gilded Age America," said Susan Earle, Spencer Museum curator of European and American art.

Armory Show

New York Armory Show 1913

The Armory Show of 1913, officially known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art, was the first large exhibition of such works in America. The exhibit challenged and changed both the academic and public definition and attitude toward art, and by doing so altered the course of history for American artists. Marking the end of one era and the beginning of another, The Armory Show shattered the provincial calm of American art. It rocked the public and blasted the academies of painting and sculpture. Four thousand guests visited the rooms on the opening night. For the first time, the American public, the press, and the art world in general were exposed to the changes wrought by the great innovators in European art, from Cezanne to Picasso. The exhibit led to profound changes in the art market in the United States, and to the broad acceptance of modern works.

4 of our artists exhibited there.

Cassatt

Hassam

Ryder

Twachtman

The Civil War

http://americanart.si.edu/education/pdf/civil_war_photo.pdf

Historical Background:

The Civil War, the so-called first modern war, was also the first to be thoroughly photographed. Some 1500 photographers produced thousands of images in urban studios as well as in temporary locations in the field. Aside from the photographic portraits affordable to even the poorest soldier, the public could purchase group portraits of important officers, scenes of camp life, and pictures showing the marvels of military engineering such as bridges and fortifications. Battlefield photographs taken shortly after military action form a much smaller category. Photographers carrying cumbersome equipment kept their distance from the fighting, so almost no images exist that depict the action of battle. Though ironically the most often published, photographs of bodies rarelywere taken. The ravage of war is more often seen in photographs of a natural landscape decimated by the firestorm of battle. (from Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art & Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.)

In examining seven Civil War era photographs and the accompanying text, participants should be able to link the photograph to its historical context. Teaching the Civil War through images is a powerful way to provoke discussion and provide a richer understanding of the landscape and the period.

New York 7th Regiment Officers

Egbert Guy Fowx

about 1863 salted paper print mounted on paperboard 5 5/8 x 7 1/2 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

THE SEVENTH REGIMENT STEUBEN VOLUNTEERS. This regiment, which is composed altogether of Germans, was first organized on the 8th of last January by experienced officers who saw some hard service in Poland, Hungary, Schleswig-Holstein and Greece. The regiment is now full, and mustered in the United States service. From the organization of the regiment up to the time it was admitted into the United States service, the men have been liberally supported by their officers. The uniforms of the men will be after the model of the United States Rifles, and they will be armed with Enfield’s Minie muskets. All of them are young able bodied fellows, and they drill admirably according to Hardee’s tactics. Both officers and men are extremely anxious to get en route, and are now only detained in consequence of having to wait for their equipments from the State. Several of the privates have left their families in very indigent circumstances, and the officers are doing their best to try and alleviate their distress.

7th Regiment New York Civil War Newspaper Clippings. Retrieved May 25, 2006, from New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs: Military History Web Site: http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/historic/reghist/civil/infantry/7thInf/7thInfCWN.htm

Major H. A. Barnum, Recovery after a Penetrating Gunshot Wound of the Abdomen with Perforation of the Left Ilium,
from the Photographic Catalogue of the Surgical Section William Bell 1865
albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard 8 1/2 x 6 5/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

As head of the photographic department of the Army Medical Museum established in Washington, D.C., after the Civil War, William Bell took pictures of veterans who had been severely wounded in battle. His work provides a visual archive of destruction quite different from the better-known albums of Alexander Gardner and George Bernard. Linking medical science with artistic formality, Bell’s stark portraits of the wounded were compiled in a seven-volume publication entitled Photographic Catalogue of the Surgical Section of the Army Medical Museum. Accompanying each photograph was a detailed description of the injury to the body and the appropriate medical procedure.

Foresta, Merry A. American Photographs: The First Century. Smithsonian American Art Museum (online exhibition). Retrieved on December 12, 2006 from http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/helios/amerphotos.html

Bivouac of the 45th Illinois near the Shirley House, Vicksburg, Mississippi

O. D. Finch

1863 salted paper print mounted on paperboard 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

During the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Shirley House, residence of Unionist “Judge” James Shirley and his family, was caught in the crossfire of Union troops led by Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate troops under John C. Pemberton. Surrendering to Union forces, the family was removed from their home to protect them from cannon fire and housed in a manmade cave, like the ones (called sheebangs) in this photograph. The siege ended after six weeks when Pemberton, who was responsible for the city’s residents and more than 200,000 Confederate soldiers (many ill with disease and starvation), surrendered Vicksburg to the Union Army. The Union thereby gained complete control of the Mississippi River. The Shirleys retained their estate until 1902, when it was given to the National Park Service and became the Vicksburg National Military Park.

Foresta, Merry A. American Photographs: The First Century. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of
American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

The Sick Soldier

studio of Mathew B. Brady

about 1863 albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard 5 5/8 x 7 7/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

When the Civil War began, photographer Mathew Brady obtained permission for himself and his staff to travel with the troops. All photographs taken by Brady or any of his staff were published under the name Brady and Co. Like most photographers during the war, Brady and his staff rarely photographed actual battles. Cumbersome camera equipment and slow exposure times made it difficult to capture action. Instead, they focused on the aftermath of battle, military portraits, and scenes of camp life. Brady’s expertise as a studio photographer may have suggested the posed drama of The Sick Soldier. His picture of a Northern soldier being aided by another played to the collective trauma of mid- nineteenth-century households, most of whom had suffered the loss of a relative or friend.

Foresta, Merry A. American Photographs: The First Century. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of
American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

Ruins of Gaines’ Mill, Virginia, from Gardner’s Sketchbook of the Civil War
John Reekie 1865/published 1865 Printer: Alexander Gardner
albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard 7 x 9 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

“Gaines’ Mill” is the place from which the battle of June 27th 1862, takes its name. Situated near the center of our line, it was the scene of severe fighting, and at the close of that bloody day, the building was used as a hospital. All of the structure that would burn, was destroyed in one of the raids around Richmond, leaving only the brick superstructure, above which, scorched by the fire, the dead trees spread their blackened branches. In front, the partially exposed skeleton illustrates the hasty manner of the soldier’s burial, it being by no means uncommon for the rains to wash away the shallow covering, and bring to view the remains of the dead. The owner of the mill did not have a creditable reputation in the army.... If this is true, he suffered no more than his deserts, in the destruction of his property.

Gardner, Alexander. Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

Quarters of Men in Fort Sedgwick, Known as Fort Hell

Timothy H. O'Sullivan

1865 albumen print on paper 7 5/8 x 10 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

This view exhibits the bomb-proof quarters occupied by both officers and men in Fort Sedgwick. Excavations were made in the ground and covered first with heavy pieces of timber, over which a layer of earth, of several feet in thickness, is thrown, sufficient to resist the penetration and explosion of any shell that might fall upon them.... Fort Sedgwick is one of the most advanced points of the United States lines, standing boldly forward, and constantly inviting attack. The work is a very irregular one and is thrown across the Jerusalem Plank Road, one of the most important thoroughfares leading out of Petersburg [Virginia]. ... Scarcely a day passed without witnessing a heavy artillery duel, and each hour of those many long and weary months, as two brave armies lay opposite to each other, could be heard the shrill, sharp report of some leaded messenger of death. It was here, as elsewhere, that only the reckless would dare expose the slightest part of the person even for a second, and well does this noted spot deserve the not very euphonious name to ears polite, as given by the soldiers, of “Fort Hell.”

Gardner, Alexander. Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

Burnside Bridge, Across Antietam Creek, Maryland, from Gardner’s Sketchbook of the Civil War

Alexander Gardner

1862/published 1865
albumen print on paper mounted on paperboard
7 x 9 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs
Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment

One mile below Sharpsburg [Maryland] on Antietam Creek, a stone structure, known as the “Burnside Bridge,” crosses the stream. ....

It was at this point that some of the most desperate fighting of the battle of Antietam occurred. The right of the Federal line was several miles above, and with the center hotly engaged, the Confederates slowly forcing them back, while General Burnside, commanding the Ninth Corps, was ordered to carry this point and turn the enemy’s right. As is partially shown by the photograph, the banks of the stream were very steep, and well defended by rifle pits which were covered by the guns of the Confederates on the ridge in the background. The assaulting column suffered heavily as it approached the bridge, and, in crossing, was exposed to a murderous fire, through which it rapidly pressed, breaking over the lines of the enemy like a resistless wave, and sweeping him from the hillside. Here our troops again formed under a heavy artillery fire, and pushed forward into the standing corn, out of which a second line of Confederates suddenly arose and renewed the contest, which lasted for many hours, finally resulting in our victory. At the close of the fight the dead and wounded on the field here presented seemed countless. The Confederates were buried where they fell, and our own dead carefully interred in groups, which were enclosed with the material of fences overthrown in the struggle. The stone wall extending from the bridge still bears evidence of the battle, and is the only monument of many gallant men who sleep in the meadow at its side.

Gardner, Alexander. Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

Additional resources
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/7milVol/

Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War (Washington: Philp & Solomons, 1865–66) 
was published in two editions, one in 1865 and the other in 1866, both editions consisting of two volumes of fifty albumen print photographs, each with a descriptive caption, generally believed to have been written by Gardner himself. The Cornell University copy is from the first edition, containing one hundred unnumbered plates.
 

Historians estimate that no more than 200 copies of the Sketch Book were produced. The small print run is due primarily to the difficulty of mass-producing photographically illustrated books in the 1860s, before the advent of simple, reliable photomechanical processes. The original photographic prints were pasted onto boards, which were then bound together with letterpress-printed text. The set of two volumes sold for $150, a price that reflects the laborious production methods necessary for this work. 200 sets were ultimately published, but many did not sell. The high price most likely accounts for the project’s financial failure. 

“The Blank Horror”: War and its Victims

Gardner’s photographers did not whitewash the gruesome reality of the battlefield. Following the army’s movements closely, they sometimes set up cameras while combat was still underway. Frequently, they arrived at battle scenes before casualties had been buried, as some of the following images demonstrate.

Casualties were not only human: photographers captured the skeletal remains of the city of Richmond after Lee’s army retreated from the Southern capital in April, 1865. Fleeing troops had set fire to munitions warehouses; the explosions triggered fires that destroyed much of the business section of the city and over 1,000 buildings.

“Devastated by the Armies”: The Changed Landscape

Warfare had a dramatic impact on the landscape. Massive engineering projects displaced earth, removed timber for building material, and erected large structures, all of which altered familiar terrain. Fort Sedgwick (right) on the Petersburg, Virginia, front, was a notable example of defenses carved out of the earth; it was designed by Major Washington Roebling. Battles brought tent cities, while artillery destroyed trees and rocks. In short, war changed the topography—a reality seen especially well through the eye of Timothy O’Sullivan.

Faithful Servants: the Administration of War

Gardner’s photographic studio in Washington, D.C., brought him into close contact with many important government officials. Allan Pinkerton was a personal friend of Gardner’s, and first hired the photographer as an agent of the Union Army’s Secret Service. Gardner began by making photographic reproductions of secret documents, later documenting battles through photographs. All the while, he maintained a thriving commercial trade in photography. He took thirty-seven portrait photographs of President Lincoln—more than any other photographer. Thus Gardner had a special knowledge of and appreciation for the Union’s “faithful servants” who worked quietly, but effectively alongside soldiers.

“The Very Life of Camp”

Many of the photographs Gardner chose to include in his Sketch Book depict mundane moments of the soldier’s life. The detailed examination of the unglamorous aspects of life in military encampments testifies to the familiarity that Gardner and his photographers enjoyed inside the camps. Cities of tents, post offices, blacksmiths—all became subjects for the camera. The images also bring insight into the leisure time spent by soldiers, both through David Knox’s image of a cock fight, and through Gardner’s verbal description of sports, games and regimental pets. Finally, James Gardner’s Breaking Camp (detail, right) offers a view of a camp dismantled, its text, written after the war, is a nostalgic ode to a way of life gone by.

Advantageous Auxiliaries:
Warfare & Technology

New technologies developed in the mid-nineteenth century had a dramatic impact on military engagements during the Civil War. Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph, operating in the U. S. since 1844, proved to be a powerful means of communication. Gardner’s captions provide fascinating detail about the construction and use of the telegraph in the field. The figure standing to the left of the field telegraph wagon in David Knox’s photograph, plate 73, Field Telegraph Battery Wagon (right), is James Gardner, brother of Alexander Gardner, and contributing photographer (see plate 63, Breaking Camp). Ironically, signaling—an ancient form of communication—proved itself just as crucial to military operations as the humming telegraph wires, as the text accompanying Plate 22, Signal Tower. Elk Mountain, Overlooking Battle-field of Antietam, demonstrates.

The wet collodion, glass plate negatives used to take these photographs required long exposures of 20 seconds to five minutes. Split-second movements could not be captured, which accounts for the many ghost images of subjects who had moved during the exposure. The long exposure time needed partly accounts for the presence of only one active combat scene in the Sketch Book: Plate 31, Battery D, 2nd U. S. Artillery in Action.

“To the Memory of the Patriots”

Gardner’s essential project was to recount the history of the Civil War through images. Gardner planned the Sketch Book as a form of documentation, but was capable of stretching the truth for the sake of storytelling. He was also aware of how crucial a role he, his photographer colleagues, and other professionals had played in the telling of history throughout the war. The New York Herald, for instance, assembled its own army of correspondents to follow the movements of the Army of the Potomac. Photographers and journalists worked together to memorialize events and sites of the war, their images and words serving as monuments alongside the obelisk at Bull Run (right).

Gettysburg

The photographers Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan and James Gibson set off for Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, hours after telegraphs had relayed the news that the battle had begun. Gardner was briefly captured by J. E. B. Stuart and his retreating troops in Emmitsburg, Maryland, while en route to Gettysburg, but was released after a few hours’ detention. When the photographers arrived in Gettysburg, they found battlefields strewn with corpses, and set up their cameras to record the scenes. The two most famous images of the Sketch Book were taken at Gettysburg: Harvest of Death, by O’Sullivan, and Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter, by Gardner. Both images depict the human cost of warfare in very stark terms, directly confronting a few of the many corpses the photographers encountered. It has been determined that Gardner added a rifle from his collection of props, and moved the body of the sharpshooter to construct a more artistic composition for his own photograph. His accompanying text, written three years later, is likewise a heavily fictionalized account of the sharpshooter’s demise.

Winslow Homer

Winslow HomerBorn: Boston, Massachusetts 1836

Died: Prout's Neck, Maine 1910

Biography

Painter and graphic artist. Homer's illustrations of the Civil War forHarper's Weekly are singular and outstanding examples of wartime reporting. Later, his dramatic paintings of the sea, many of which were completed at his seacoast home in Prout's Neck, Me., established Homer as a leading American artist.

No single artist represented as many different old New Englands as did Winslow Homer. An illustrator, watercolorist, marine and landscape painter, Homer's vision of his native region enjoyed great currency in his lifetime and influenced countless others, both before and after his death. His path to greatness, like so many other painters of the period, led directly out of a work-a-day middle-class background.

Homer's father owned a hardware store in Boston and his mother was an accomplished watercolorist. The younger Homer took a job with John Henry Bufford and, like James Wells Champney, the future artist seemed destined for a career as an illustrator. In 1859, however, Homer moved to New York City and began taking classes at the National Academy of Design. He came to popular attention during the Civil War as a sketch artist for Harper's Weekly and his oil paintings of wartime scenes secured his place as a major American talent. He was elected to the National Academy in 1866.

Homer traveled to Paris that year and upon his return focused his art on nostalgic scenes of rural life, including one-room school houses, children at play, country stores, and an old wooden mill. In 1881 and 1882, he lived in Cullercoats, an English fishing village on the North Sea coast. Homer relocated to Prout's Neck, Maine, and, for the remainder of his life, dedicated himself primarily to painting the rugged people and landscape of the Atlantic coastline.

A Visit from the Old Mistress

1876oil on canvas18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61.0 cm.)Smithsonian American Art Museumhttp://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=10737A Visit from the Old Mistress captures a tentative encounter in the postwar South. The freed slaves are no longer obliged to greet their former mistress with welcoming gestures, and one remains seated as she would not have been allowed to do before the war. Winslow Homer composed the work from sketches he had made while traveling through Virginia; it conveys a silent tension between two communities seeking to understand their future. The formal equivalence between the standing figures suggests the balance that the nation hoped to find in the difficult years of Reconstruction.

High Cliff, Coast of Maine.
1894
oil.
30 1/2 x 38 1/4 in.
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/t2go/1ga/index-noframe.html?/exhibitions/online/t2go/1ga/1909.7.29.html
The ocean wages a mighty and relentless assault on a rocky cliff at Prout's Neck, Maine, where Winslow Homer took refuge from civilization for thirty years. Two small figures at the upper right provide the only hint of man's witness to the natural drama. Homer was despondent when the painting did not sell quickly, saying, “I cannot do better than that. Why should I paint?”

Bear Hunting, Prospect Rock
1892
watercolor and pencil
13 15/16 x 20 1/16 in.

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/highlights/artworks.cfm?id=GM&StartRow=34

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly Guns ready, two grizzled hunters balance against a steep rock face that drops precipitously to a valley floor far below. Though no bear appears in the painting, the danger is palpable. The men are modeled on guides from the North Woods Club where Homer spent much of his time. Prospect Rock, located less than a quarter of a mile away from the clubhouse and reached by a graded trail, was one of Homer’s favorite spots to paint. He often rearranged or modified details of the landscape to suit his compositional needs. In this watercolor Homer presents man as an essential part of nature, neither overwhelmed by its grandeur, nor fully in control of the wilderness.
Art on viewhttp://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/results/?num=10&view=1&name=winslow+homer&title=&keywords=&type=&number=&btnG.x=48&btnG.y=11&btnG=Find

Winslow Homer and the Civil War

http://www.civilwar.si.edu/homer_intro.html
Winslow Homer (1836—1910) was twenty-five when the Civil War began in the spring of 1861. Although his native state of Massachusetts was recruiting thousands of men his age to serve in the Union army, Homer, as a special artist for Harper’s Weekly, was fortunate to have been able to pursue his chosen profession while satisfying his wanderlust for adventure much like a soldier. He was just beginning a lifelong career that would earn him fame and affluence for his paintings of American life and nature, especially of the sea. Already he was winning admirers through the pages of Harper’s with his sensitive wood engravings that portrayed the life of soldiers in camp and conveyed the longing of loved ones left behind.

Homer was mostly a self-taught artist whose talent was readily apparent from the start of his career. It was matched by his determination to develop his skills independently and to his own liking. As evidence of this, Homer declined to join the staff of Harper’s, preferring instead to contribute to the paper as a freelance artist. For Homer, the Civil War provided an unusual opportunity to explore and practice the nuances of his profession, while rendering a service to those who valued his art as a documentary of the war.

Between 1861 and 1865, Homer made several trips to the war front in Virginia. Armed with a letter from Fletcher Harper, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, identifying him as a “special artist,” Homer was able to move through the lines and gain access to the Army of the Potomac. Early in April 1861, he was in Alexandria and witnessed the embarkation of the army aboard steamers that would ferry it to the Peninsula near Richmond in preparation for General George B. McClellan’s long-awaited spring offensive. A drawing he made of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry—the only Union regiment to carry lances—gave witness to Homer's eye for the unusual and the dramatic.

Homer sailed with the army down the Potomac toward Fortress Monroe and Yorktown in the Tidewater region. With his drawing supplies of pen and pencil, gray wash, and white paper, Homer stayed with the army for about two months, during which time the siege of Yorktown took place and the Battle of Fair Oaks was fought. Except for what can be delineated in his drawings, Homer never kept records of his movements. Yet the correspondence of an acquaintance, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Channing Barlow of the 61st New York Infantry, indicated that the artist camped, at least temporarily, with the 61st. Homer subtly made this association himself in at least two of his works, in which the number “61” appears on a knapsack. Based on evidence in two other works—the paintings The Briarwood Pipe (1864) and Pitching Horseshoes (1865)—Homer at some point also came in contact with the 5th New York Infantry, also known as “Duryee’s Zouaves.” Labeled “the best disciplined and soldierly regiment in the Army” by General McClellan, they wore distinctive Zouave uniforms of bright red pantaloons, red fezzes, and dark blue collarless jackets. Homer made sketches of these colorfully clad soldiers, fully realizing that this work had a potential for “future greatness.”

“Future greatness.” That was how Homer’s mother described her son and his activities in the fall of 1861. Mrs. Homer’s confidence evokes the self-assuredness of the artist himself. While lasting fame still awaited him, Homer studiously used the backdrop of the Civil War as a practice canvas upon which to record a series of his impressions, a few of which have become iconic images of the common soldier. Many of his sketches would of course appear as wood engravings in Harper’s. Still dozens more would become study-vignettes for future paintings, some of which he put on exhibition and offered for sale.

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York City owns more than three dozen of Homer’s original Civil War sketches. These form part of a larger collection of 287 drawings donated by Homer’s brother, Charles Savage Homer Jr., in 1912, two years after Winslow’s death. The drawings, many of them rough sketches, are indicative of how Homer worked to compile a portfolio of images for future use. While his artistic skill is clearly evident, these drawings reveal the early work of a man with great ambitions who would become one of America’s most acclaimed artists.