Lot Essay
Like many of Winslow Homer's genre paintings from the early 1870s, Grace Hoops is a poignant image that both celebrates the innocence of childhood and at the same time suggests that the responsibilities of adulthood are not far away. The painting depicts two young girls playing grace hoops, a garden game in which brightly colored wooden hoops are tossed between two players who then catch them with a pair of sticks. The game tested young girls' gracefulness, dexterity and poise and it also served as a genteel counterpart to the rough-and tumble schoolyard games, such as snap-the-whip, played by young boys.
In Grace Hoops Homer has placed the two young women on the lawn of a country garden. The distant horizon is visible beyond a white picket fence which encloses the garden and provides a cloistered setting for the two figures. The garden is embellished with a variety of flowers--a stand of pink hollyhocks adds a dash of color in the right distance beyond the sun-dappled lawn, while daisies and other wild flowers enliven the foreground. The young woman in the dark dress has just tossed the hoop using a pair of blue-striped sticks. Her companion, dressed in white, watches the hoop intently as she prepares to catch it.
Describing Homer's depiction of young women, Lloyd Goodrich has written, "Thus Homer was one of the first to paint the American girl, since so favorite a subject for our artists and writers. She has seldom had a more sympathetic and at the same time more honest interpreter. The works in which she figured, with their engaging mixture of navet and instinctive elegance, were the most delightful pictorial records of fashionable American country life of the period." (Winslow Homer, New York, 1944, p. 28)
In Grace Hoops Homer has captured the precise moment when the outcome of the game is held in balance. The ring is suspended effortlessly in the air as it moves from one player to the other, and the critical moment of transition is held in check. The resulting sense of timelessness is reinforced by the soft, atmospheric clouds and gentle luminist light that envelops the figures. Yet this sense of stopped time evokes meaning on a more profound level, as the girls are also caught in a moment of transition between childhood and adulthood. This game of delicacy and poise mirrors their own position, poised on the threshold of adult concerns and responsibilities, but not yet having put aside their childhood games.
This painting will be included in the Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.
In Grace Hoops Homer has placed the two young women on the lawn of a country garden. The distant horizon is visible beyond a white picket fence which encloses the garden and provides a cloistered setting for the two figures. The garden is embellished with a variety of flowers--a stand of pink hollyhocks adds a dash of color in the right distance beyond the sun-dappled lawn, while daisies and other wild flowers enliven the foreground. The young woman in the dark dress has just tossed the hoop using a pair of blue-striped sticks. Her companion, dressed in white, watches the hoop intently as she prepares to catch it.
Describing Homer's depiction of young women, Lloyd Goodrich has written, "Thus Homer was one of the first to paint the American girl, since so favorite a subject for our artists and writers. She has seldom had a more sympathetic and at the same time more honest interpreter. The works in which she figured, with their engaging mixture of navet and instinctive elegance, were the most delightful pictorial records of fashionable American country life of the period." (Winslow Homer, New York, 1944, p. 28)
In Grace Hoops Homer has captured the precise moment when the outcome of the game is held in balance. The ring is suspended effortlessly in the air as it moves from one player to the other, and the critical moment of transition is held in check. The resulting sense of timelessness is reinforced by the soft, atmospheric clouds and gentle luminist light that envelops the figures. Yet this sense of stopped time evokes meaning on a more profound level, as the girls are also caught in a moment of transition between childhood and adulthood. This game of delicacy and poise mirrors their own position, poised on the threshold of adult concerns and responsibilities, but not yet having put aside their childhood games.
This painting will be included in the Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.