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拍品专文
Winslow Homer painted Returning from the Spring in 1874. During this period in his career Homer often used children as subject matter for his pictures and created such monumental works as Breezing Up (National Gallery of Art, Washington) as well as more intimate and thoughtful images such as Returning from the Spring. Homer executed several other pictures in this jewel-like scale, such as Three Boys in a Dory of 1873 (oil on panel, 6 x 10 in., Sale, New York, Christie's, May 28, 1992, lot 132).
Homer's finest paintings from the mid-1870s depict the idyllic life of rural America. These works do not portray the American countryside in a nostalgic fashion--instead Homer infuses them with a poetry that underscores the simple qualities of late nineteenth-century farm life. Lloyd Goodrich has written, "Homer was painting old-fashioned American farm life in its golden day, and showing its cheer, sturdy independence and simple enjoyments, not its elements of decay. Mingled with his honest naturalism was a strain of idyllicism, a deep-seated love of life spent close to the earth, regulated by the cycle of the seasons, in which labor was healthy, play natural, and even hardships more enjoyable than the city-dweller's lot. His pictures captured the positive pleasures of the old rural life with an authenticity unmatched by any other artist of the time." (Winslow Homer, New York, 1944, p. 29)
Throughout his career Homer often re-used compositional motifs that he found particularly successful or pleasing. The figure of the young girl in Returning from the Spring reappears in A Temperance Meeting [Noon Time] also of 1874 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) where she is paired with a companion to whom she has offered a dipper of water and in Girl with a Pail of 1875 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.). All three compositions share the same warm, enveloping light that is the hallmark of Homer's finest works from the mid 1870s.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonné of the works of Winslow Homer.
Homer's finest paintings from the mid-1870s depict the idyllic life of rural America. These works do not portray the American countryside in a nostalgic fashion--instead Homer infuses them with a poetry that underscores the simple qualities of late nineteenth-century farm life. Lloyd Goodrich has written, "Homer was painting old-fashioned American farm life in its golden day, and showing its cheer, sturdy independence and simple enjoyments, not its elements of decay. Mingled with his honest naturalism was a strain of idyllicism, a deep-seated love of life spent close to the earth, regulated by the cycle of the seasons, in which labor was healthy, play natural, and even hardships more enjoyable than the city-dweller's lot. His pictures captured the positive pleasures of the old rural life with an authenticity unmatched by any other artist of the time." (Winslow Homer, New York, 1944, p. 29)
Throughout his career Homer often re-used compositional motifs that he found particularly successful or pleasing. The figure of the young girl in Returning from the Spring reappears in A Temperance Meeting [Noon Time] also of 1874 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) where she is paired with a companion to whom she has offered a dipper of water and in Girl with a Pail of 1875 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.). All three compositions share the same warm, enveloping light that is the hallmark of Homer's finest works from the mid 1870s.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonné of the works of Winslow Homer.