Lot Essay
When Winslow Homer arrived in Cullercoats, England in the summer of 1881, he found a small, isolated fishing village perched on the edge of the North Sea along England's northeast coast. The residents who made their living there were still firmly rooted in age-old fishing traditions that had been practiced for generations. This isolated community and its timeless qualities had a profound impact on Homer, who had been living and working in New York City for over a decade-- the burgeoning capital of commerce and industrialization. Whereas in New York the machine progressively came to dictate human activity, in Cullercoats, men and women confronted the powers of nature firsthand in a timeless struggle in their daily life and work. The Life Brigade of circa 1882 is a reflection of this stark contrast and foreshadows the great themes of the relationship between man and nature that Homer would continue to address in his art for the rest of his life.
To capture this ancient struggle Homer composed a very modern painting. Stark in its simplicity, The Life Brigade poses a group of men bound together by their common duties against a nearly abstract vision of a boiling sea churned up by a violent gale. The composition evokes the overwhelming power of the elements: a steel gray sky, white surf and watery reflection in the foreground combine to create an image of the forceful and uncompromising nature of the sea.
Such dramatically reduced compositional forms and the subdued palette seen in The Life Brigade were new to Homer. Aesthetic qualities as bold and innovative as these recall the nocturnes of James McNeill Whistler, such as Nocturne: Blue and Gold--Old Battersea Bridge of 1872-73 and Nocturne: Blue and Silver--Chelsea of 1871 (both: The Tate Gallery, London, England), which Homer may have seen in his brief stopover in London before his arrival in Cullercoats. Homer might have found Whistler's refined tonalist sensibility engaging, as he himself had become disenchanted with his own work and had come to England to explore new artistic and expressive possibilities. The Life Brigade evokes these new possibilities, as Homer developed a clearer sense of the direction that his art would take. The Life Brigade represents Homer looking forward and creating a very modern painting to express profound themes of great timelessness.
To paint The Life Brigade Homer referred to on-site sketches that he made while observing the fishing community and members of the local life-saving station battle the gales that ravaged the coast. This was a practice that he had used since his earliest days as an artist-correspondent for various illustrated magazines. Working in simple media such as graphite and charcoal, Homer could capture the essence of a scene and later return to a drawing for new inspiration. Such was the case with Fishermen in Oilskins (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, New York), which shares many features with The Life Brigade. (figure a) The drawing depicts a group of fishermen or members of the local life-saving brigade standing in the shelter of a structure at the edge of the sea. The figures look out across the water, which is suggested by dashes of white chalk, qualities that Homer would develop further in the final painting. Even in the drawing Homer has simplified the composition to create a thoroughly modern image, abstracting the figures and the setting to heighten the stark struggle between man and nature.
With its bold simplicity, The Life Brigade evokes the great themes that Homer would continue to paint for the rest of his life, beginning with images of the Grand Banks fishing fleet, such as The Fog Warning (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts) of 1885, and culminating in the monumental canvases of the coast of Prouts Neck of the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. The Life Brigade displays Homer's rich, painterly technique. He has laid up the paint on a finely woven linen canvas, texturing the brushstrokes to create a lively surface. The brushes have been loaded with pigment, and he has placed bold strokes alongside more thinly painted glazes. This painting style would evolve over time, with the paint itself assuming an expressive potential all its own--a common element seen throughout Homer's mature works. In its nearly abstract quality, the pigment and brushstrokes take on meaning of their own, and Homer stretches their expressive boundaries to reveal a new, profound vision in his art.
The Life Brigade is among the few paintings in oil that Homer created while living in England. The spontaneity of works on paper--drawings and watercolors--appealed to him, yet Homer felt compelled to create his most impressive and serious works in oil. Franklin Kelly writes, "As had so often been the case before, and would be again, Homer, after thoroughly investigating a subject in drawings and watercolors, returned to working in oil to make his final statement. No matter what the potential of bringing his watercolors to a more serious level, Homer instinctively knew that oil offered him the greatest possibilities for conveying the most serious and profound meanings. That had always been the case for him, but the Cullercoats experience served as a forcible reminder. At this moment when he was reconsidering and realigning his art in so many ways, he ended up reaffirming the primacy of the medium he had always used to greatest effect." ("Process of Change," Winslow Homer, Washington, DC, 1995, p. 182)
This painting will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonné of the works of Winslow Homer.