Lot Essay
In December 1884 Winslow Homer set sail for the Caribbean, destined for the city of Nassau in the Bahamas. 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 that it was planning. 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 inspiring setting, Homer created some of his most luminous and memorable watercolors, among them Along the Road, the Bahamas, which was executed in January or February 1885.
This was the painter's first visit to a tropical environment, and his new surroundings had a profound impact on his art. H. 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 affected 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, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 134)
Along the Road, the Bahamas represents a departure from the genre paintings that Homer had executed earlier in his career. Whereas the figures in the works from the 1870s and early 1880s are the focus of the composition, in his first series of genre pictures executed in the Bahamas, light, color and atmosphere are his primary concern. H. Cooper writes, "The island's rich soil provided a profusion of vegetables and fruit, which were carried on the heads of the women to the market in the central city early every morning. These women walking along the coral roads toward Nassau, with large trays piled high with layers of banana, oranges, melons, vegetables, and eggs, became the subject of at least six watercolors. . . Although Homer portrayed the women with a quiet dignity, he never endowed them with the heroic presence of The Cotton Pickers (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California) or the Cullercoats women. Such monumental types no longer represented a primary subject for him. Shown at a distance from the foreground and consequently small in scale, the Bahamian women are but one element in a scene whose real subject is light and color." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 136)
This watercolor will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.
This was the painter's first visit to a tropical environment, and his new surroundings had a profound impact on his art. H. 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 affected 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, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 134)
Along the Road, the Bahamas represents a departure from the genre paintings that Homer had executed earlier in his career. Whereas the figures in the works from the 1870s and early 1880s are the focus of the composition, in his first series of genre pictures executed in the Bahamas, light, color and atmosphere are his primary concern. H. Cooper writes, "The island's rich soil provided a profusion of vegetables and fruit, which were carried on the heads of the women to the market in the central city early every morning. These women walking along the coral roads toward Nassau, with large trays piled high with layers of banana, oranges, melons, vegetables, and eggs, became the subject of at least six watercolors. . . Although Homer portrayed the women with a quiet dignity, he never endowed them with the heroic presence of The Cotton Pickers (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California) or the Cullercoats women. Such monumental types no longer represented a primary subject for him. Shown at a distance from the foreground and consequently small in scale, the Bahamian women are but one element in a scene whose real subject is light and color." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 136)
This watercolor will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonn of the works of Winslow Homer.