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Lot Essay
"You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors," said Winslow Homer prophetically to a friend, and indeed since then the artist's watercolors have been ranked among the greatest and most enduring achievements in American art. Helen Cooper writes, "Executed over a period of more than thirty years, between 1873 and 1905, these works are unsurpassed for their direct statement, luminosity, and economy of means. . . In oil, Homer's touch was powerful, exploiting the weight and density of the medium. In watercolor, it was exquisite, full of sensuous nuance. The liquid pigment called forth in him a private and poetic vision that otherwise found no place in his art. Suffused with a special awareness of the beauty of nature, the fluid, audacious brushwork and saturated color of the mature works in particular have had a wide and liberating influence on much subsequent American watercolor painting." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 16)
Winslow Homer executed The Coral Divers in the winter of 1885 on his first trip to the Caribbean. A masterwork of control and expression in watercolor, the composition's luminous color, vibrant fluid washes and boldness rank it among Homer's finest achievements in the medium. Helen Cooper writes, "Formally, the Caribbean light had a liberating--and lasting--effect on Homer's watercolor style. The Bahamas sheets are painted with free and gestural strokes in transparent washes often of brilliant colors, leaving large areas of white paper exposed. Their style was undoubtedly suggested by the conditions of their creation: painted outdoors, and quickly, before the watery pigment could dry under the hot sun. With fewer spongings, scrapings, and lift-outs, they have a direct, seemingly unpremeditated execution. Homer was able suddenly to say things with ease that had before been communicated only with effort." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 134)
Homer set sail for the city of Nassau in the Bahamas in December 1884. Nassau was becoming a popular tourist location, and Century Magazine, for whom Homer had worked in the past, commissioned the artist to illustrate an article on the city. Traveling with his father, Homer stayed at the elegant Royal Victoria Hotel, the largest building on the island whose graceful veranda commanded a breathtaking view of the city and distant sea. In this relaxed and inspired setting, Homer created some of his most luminous and memorable watercolors, among them The Coral Divers, which was executed in January or February of 1885.
Helen Cooper writes, "Sponge diving and coral and conch fishing also became pictorial subjects. The Sponge Diver (Museum of Fine Arts Boston) is dated 1889, but as there is no evidence he visited the Bahamas that year, it was probably begun in 1885, its broader, more fluid washes reflecting Homer's increased facility in the intervening four years. This sheet and The Coral Divers represent a bronzelike figure bearing his trophy as he emerges lustrous from the waves. Homer gives these scenes vivid clarity by juxtaposing colors: the stretch of brilliant blue water shot with pale pink reflections from the submerged reefs, the white boat achieved through reserving the paper, and the dusky color of the figures." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 139)
When Homer first exhibited his Caribbean watercolors in New York and Boston in 1885-86, they were met with great praise, and critics sensed a new direction in Homer's art. Franklin Kelly writes, "Still, if the critics were quick to note that Homer's first tropical watercolors lacked the sense of gravity and seriousness that so memorably distinguished his Cullercoats sheets, they were equally quick to notice that in them he had demonstrated an impressive new handling of the medium. Homer had now found 'color and sunshine' and a 'newborn power of rendering them,'' a frankness and yet a harmony.' And surely the source of that new power play in the fact that Homer painted these watercolors not as part of a larger systematic process intended to result in a finished work of high ambition, but as records of actual experience. They were, in other words, transcriptions of the visual encounters with new things in a new land that energized Homer's creative instincts, 'memoranda of travel,' but also memoranda of excitement, interest, and pleasure." (Winslow Homer, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 187)
This watercolor will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.
Winslow Homer executed The Coral Divers in the winter of 1885 on his first trip to the Caribbean. A masterwork of control and expression in watercolor, the composition's luminous color, vibrant fluid washes and boldness rank it among Homer's finest achievements in the medium. Helen Cooper writes, "Formally, the Caribbean light had a liberating--and lasting--effect on Homer's watercolor style. The Bahamas sheets are painted with free and gestural strokes in transparent washes often of brilliant colors, leaving large areas of white paper exposed. Their style was undoubtedly suggested by the conditions of their creation: painted outdoors, and quickly, before the watery pigment could dry under the hot sun. With fewer spongings, scrapings, and lift-outs, they have a direct, seemingly unpremeditated execution. Homer was able suddenly to say things with ease that had before been communicated only with effort." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 134)
Homer set sail for the city of Nassau in the Bahamas in December 1884. Nassau was becoming a popular tourist location, and Century Magazine, for whom Homer had worked in the past, commissioned the artist to illustrate an article on the city. Traveling with his father, Homer stayed at the elegant Royal Victoria Hotel, the largest building on the island whose graceful veranda commanded a breathtaking view of the city and distant sea. In this relaxed and inspired setting, Homer created some of his most luminous and memorable watercolors, among them The Coral Divers, which was executed in January or February of 1885.
Helen Cooper writes, "Sponge diving and coral and conch fishing also became pictorial subjects. The Sponge Diver (Museum of Fine Arts Boston) is dated 1889, but as there is no evidence he visited the Bahamas that year, it was probably begun in 1885, its broader, more fluid washes reflecting Homer's increased facility in the intervening four years. This sheet and The Coral Divers represent a bronzelike figure bearing his trophy as he emerges lustrous from the waves. Homer gives these scenes vivid clarity by juxtaposing colors: the stretch of brilliant blue water shot with pale pink reflections from the submerged reefs, the white boat achieved through reserving the paper, and the dusky color of the figures." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 139)
When Homer first exhibited his Caribbean watercolors in New York and Boston in 1885-86, they were met with great praise, and critics sensed a new direction in Homer's art. Franklin Kelly writes, "Still, if the critics were quick to note that Homer's first tropical watercolors lacked the sense of gravity and seriousness that so memorably distinguished his Cullercoats sheets, they were equally quick to notice that in them he had demonstrated an impressive new handling of the medium. Homer had now found 'color and sunshine' and a 'newborn power of rendering them,'' a frankness and yet a harmony.' And surely the source of that new power play in the fact that Homer painted these watercolors not as part of a larger systematic process intended to result in a finished work of high ambition, but as records of actual experience. They were, in other words, transcriptions of the visual encounters with new things in a new land that energized Homer's creative instincts, 'memoranda of travel,' but also memoranda of excitement, interest, and pleasure." (Winslow Homer, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 187)
This watercolor will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.