“I tell you it is impossible to paint an outdoor figure in a studio light with any degree of certainty. Outdoors you have the sky overhead giving one light: then the reflected light from whatever reflects, then the direct light of the sun : so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several luminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere.” – Winslow Homer

The nineteenth century American artist, Winslow Homer, is most often remembered for his maritime paintings and scenes depicting the daily life of country people. He spent his childhood in a carefree rustic New England and although he traveled widely and even lived abroad for several years, his connection with the sea and the rough coast always brought him back to it.

As a young man, Homer supported himself by creating illustrations for the popular journals of the day. His career as a popular illustrator has been generally forgotten in his later fame as an oil painter (and watercolorist). The long experience with drawing in black & white was important to his development as a painter.

In 1867 he spent a year in France and studied paintings by Manet. The French artist’s work has strong value (light and dark) contrasts to express strong light. Monet, Renoir and other Impressionists painted soft atmospheric paintings. Homer, influenced by Manet, strived to depict the sharp light and shadow contrasts of summer sunshine.

He began to paint in oil and watercolor even before he ended his career as an illustrator in 1875. “When I have selected the thing carefully, I paint it exactly as it appears.” – Winslow Homer. He traveled throughout his life and his watercolor paintings done in the sunny Bahamas and Key West are some of his best known works.

Patterns of color are simplified in strong light as shown in “Key West, Hauling Anchor”, 1903

“I prefer every time a picture composed and painted outdoors.” – Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer never married and spent his later years in relative solitude on the coast at Prout’s Neck, Maine. He began a series of dramatic Atlantic seascapes in oil and continued to study the effects of sunlight and sea until his death in 1910.