Lot Essay
“Unsurpassed for their direct statement, luminosity, and economy of means,” Helen A. Cooper writes, “Winslow Homer’s watercolors have, almost from the time they were made, been ranked among the greatest achievements in American art.” (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, D.C. 1986, p. 16) Homer’s celebrated experimental watercolor technique first came to full fruition during his 1880 summer in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Combining two of the quintessential themes of his career—the travails of boyhood and the lives of fisherfolk, his works on paper from this seminal year demonstrate the power of perfected simplicity. Capturing the spirit of coastal life with crisp color and clear vision, Boy with Blue Dory showcases Homer’s prowess with the watercolor medium at its pinnacle.
In 1873, Homer visited Gloucester for the first time, staying for a few months in the New England seafaring town. Still in the midst of his career as an illustrator, he concentrated particularly on drawing the children often seen along the seaside. Like his post-Civil War farmyard scenes featuring the antics of boys, as D. Scott Atkinson explains, “His images of Gloucester children were part of a larger series of works, beginning in the late 1860s, in which he explored the theme of boyhood...The Gloucester boys represent a logical continuation of this investigation of childhood. They wear the same attire as their earlier counterparts—straw hats, cotton shirts, outgrown trousers—and very often have bare feet." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, Chicago, Illinois, 1990, pp. 15-16) This celebration of childhood mirrored the literature of the period, notably including Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1876), which also captured a yearning for the innocence of antebellum days and an escape from the harsh realities of life.
While thematically a continuation of earlier work, Homer’s Gloucester period was a key turning point for the artist in terms of technique. His 1873 summer saw his first experimentations with watercolor, while his return to the area in 1880 saw the full blossoming of a mature artist charting his own course in the medium. Rather than staying in town again, in 1880 he lived at a lighthouse on Ten Pound Island in the Gloucester harbor, immersing himself fully in the sea life and distinct silvery light on the water. “If the summer of 1873 was a period of nascent learning,” Atkinson explains, "the summer of 1880—devoted exclusively to watercolor—was one of culminating maturation. The long apprenticeship that had begun in Gloucester concluded there with a group of watercolors demonstrating Homer's command of the medium and breadth of vision." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, p. 53)
More specifically, Homer clarified his color choices, paring down to a palette of Prussian blue, cobalt, vermillion, yellow ocher and black. Using a heavily grained paper, he allowed the white of the paper itself to glisten through his watercolor washes, with limited pencil drawing and more direct brushstrokes allowing the color to fully steer the composition. Kathleen Foster summarizes, “The key quality in these Gloucester watercolors, and in the success of Homer’s mature style, is simplicity, within which lies endless suggestiveness and visual delight. The compositions, often reduced to parallel bars of land, sea, and sky interrupted only by rowboats full of children or triangular sails, have a geometric austerity distilled from the Japanese decorativeness of his earlier work…The plein-air vision has simply become more selective, showing increased sensitivity to the frame and the two-dimensional surface of the paper.” (American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, Philadelphia, 2017, p. 207)
In Boy with Blue Dory, the deep blue pigment of the titular rowboat provides the powerful anchor of the composition. Extending almost the full length of the horizontal paper, the dory is the viewer’s transport into the scene, immediately drawing the eye. This focal point provides the stage for the quintessential Homer protagonist—the hatted boy in rolled pants who is either about to embark on his voyage, or is reviewing his day’s catch aboard. Behind him, a parallel dinghy shows three boys at work alongside a white-sailed schooner that adds a vertical element to the otherwise horizontally banded scene. The almost casual nature of the watercolor washes denoting the elements of the middle ground and distant shoreline exemplify the immense skill of Homer’s naturally elegant technique. The contrasting more detailed, richer tones of the foreground figure and ocher rocks along the lower edge create a sense of atmospheric perspective that adds to the idyllic, almost ethereal, impression of the painting.
Foreshadowing his compelling Cullercoats paintings from his influential 1881 trip to England and his later roiling ocean images of Prout's Neck, Maine, Homer's 1880 works, including Boy with Blue Dory, demonstrate the artist's intuitive and incomparable skill in depicting the play of light and color on the seacoast. As Cooper reflects, "To most of Homer’s audience the largeness of conception and veracity of feeling made these watercolors the finest works he had yet shown in any medium." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 119)
In 1873, Homer visited Gloucester for the first time, staying for a few months in the New England seafaring town. Still in the midst of his career as an illustrator, he concentrated particularly on drawing the children often seen along the seaside. Like his post-Civil War farmyard scenes featuring the antics of boys, as D. Scott Atkinson explains, “His images of Gloucester children were part of a larger series of works, beginning in the late 1860s, in which he explored the theme of boyhood...The Gloucester boys represent a logical continuation of this investigation of childhood. They wear the same attire as their earlier counterparts—straw hats, cotton shirts, outgrown trousers—and very often have bare feet." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, Chicago, Illinois, 1990, pp. 15-16) This celebration of childhood mirrored the literature of the period, notably including Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1876), which also captured a yearning for the innocence of antebellum days and an escape from the harsh realities of life.
While thematically a continuation of earlier work, Homer’s Gloucester period was a key turning point for the artist in terms of technique. His 1873 summer saw his first experimentations with watercolor, while his return to the area in 1880 saw the full blossoming of a mature artist charting his own course in the medium. Rather than staying in town again, in 1880 he lived at a lighthouse on Ten Pound Island in the Gloucester harbor, immersing himself fully in the sea life and distinct silvery light on the water. “If the summer of 1873 was a period of nascent learning,” Atkinson explains, "the summer of 1880—devoted exclusively to watercolor—was one of culminating maturation. The long apprenticeship that had begun in Gloucester concluded there with a group of watercolors demonstrating Homer's command of the medium and breadth of vision." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, p. 53)
More specifically, Homer clarified his color choices, paring down to a palette of Prussian blue, cobalt, vermillion, yellow ocher and black. Using a heavily grained paper, he allowed the white of the paper itself to glisten through his watercolor washes, with limited pencil drawing and more direct brushstrokes allowing the color to fully steer the composition. Kathleen Foster summarizes, “The key quality in these Gloucester watercolors, and in the success of Homer’s mature style, is simplicity, within which lies endless suggestiveness and visual delight. The compositions, often reduced to parallel bars of land, sea, and sky interrupted only by rowboats full of children or triangular sails, have a geometric austerity distilled from the Japanese decorativeness of his earlier work…The plein-air vision has simply become more selective, showing increased sensitivity to the frame and the two-dimensional surface of the paper.” (American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, Philadelphia, 2017, p. 207)
In Boy with Blue Dory, the deep blue pigment of the titular rowboat provides the powerful anchor of the composition. Extending almost the full length of the horizontal paper, the dory is the viewer’s transport into the scene, immediately drawing the eye. This focal point provides the stage for the quintessential Homer protagonist—the hatted boy in rolled pants who is either about to embark on his voyage, or is reviewing his day’s catch aboard. Behind him, a parallel dinghy shows three boys at work alongside a white-sailed schooner that adds a vertical element to the otherwise horizontally banded scene. The almost casual nature of the watercolor washes denoting the elements of the middle ground and distant shoreline exemplify the immense skill of Homer’s naturally elegant technique. The contrasting more detailed, richer tones of the foreground figure and ocher rocks along the lower edge create a sense of atmospheric perspective that adds to the idyllic, almost ethereal, impression of the painting.
Foreshadowing his compelling Cullercoats paintings from his influential 1881 trip to England and his later roiling ocean images of Prout's Neck, Maine, Homer's 1880 works, including Boy with Blue Dory, demonstrate the artist's intuitive and incomparable skill in depicting the play of light and color on the seacoast. As Cooper reflects, "To most of Homer’s audience the largeness of conception and veracity of feeling made these watercolors the finest works he had yet shown in any medium." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, p. 119)