Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

Grace Hoops

Details
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Grace Hoops
signed and dated 'Homer 1872' lower right
oil on canvas
22 x 15in. (55.9 x 38.1cm.)
Provenance
Henry T. Chapman, Brooklyn, New York, by 1875, possibly
Sale: New York, Leavitt Art Rooms, H.T. Chapman, Jr. Works of Art, May 1-5, 1875, no. 25
Chicago, Illinois, Young's Art Galleries, by 1912
Dr. Charles B. Guinn, Carthage, Missouri, 1912
Mrs. Erwin E. Nelson, Ann Arbor, Michigan, daughter of the above
Jerry Barnes, Chicago, Illinois, 1960
Alistair Bradley Martin, Glen Head, New York, 1961
James Graham & Sons, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1964
Literature
G. Hendricks, The Life and Works of Winslow Homer, New York, 1979, pp. 96, 299
Exhibited
Chicago, Illinois, Young's Art Galleries, Loan Collection of Paintings by Americans at the Opening Exhibition at Young's Art Galleries, December 1916, no. 9
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, Twenty-Fifth Annual Exhibition, May-July 1918, no. 2
Chicago, Illinois, Young's Art Galleries, Paintings by Eminent American Old Masters and by some of the Prominent Living American Artists, 1918, no. 17
Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Sport in American Art, October-December 1944, no. 58
New York, Wildenstein & Co., A Loan Exhibition of Winslow Homer for the Benefit of the New York Botanical Garden, February-March 1947, no. 14
Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Art Gallery, Yankee Painter: A Retrospective Exhibition of Oils, Watercolors and Graphics by Winslow Homer, October-December 1963, no. 58
San Francisco, California, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The American Scene: American Paintings of the 19th Century, July-August 1964, no. 50
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Winslow Homer, April-June 1973, no. 19, illus. (This exhibition also traveled to Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July-August 1973; Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, September-October 1973)

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.