.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Executed 1880.
The magnificent series of watercolors that Winslow Homer developed during the 1870s and 1880 in the harbor town of Gloucester, Massachusetts is recognized as some of the artist's finest work. The summer of 1880, the time Small Sloop was painted, was one of great experimentation and productivity for the artist. That year, Homer had given up illustration and devoted much of his attention to depicting light and atmosphere in his paintings. He lived in almost complete solitude in a lighthouse on Ten Pound Island in the center of Gloucester Harbor, and he spent the summer painting the harbor and its inhabitants.
In Small Sloop, Winslow Homer's feeling of isolation living in the lighthouse, is depicted as the small boat sails tranquilly alone on the placid water. Homer has emphasized the vastness of the surrounding landscape by painting the sloop diminutive compared to the water and the sky. With the use of a low horizon line and emptiness of the composition, Homer continues to accentuate the open space of the sea. These broad areas of sky and water not only suggest Homer's reverence for the landscape, but also suggest he intended to explore the technical possibilities of painting this composition.
Helen A. Cooper notes, "...the achievements of the summer of 1880 are found above all in watercolors distinguished by fluid, saturated washes, brilliant light, and reductiveness of composition. Light and color now fascinated Homer more than ever, and in sheet after sheet he experimented with washes of various intensities. The handling became bolder, and the compositions stronger and simpler than in his earlier plein air sketches. In one group of works the compositional structure becomes almost two dimensional-reduced to parallel bars of land, sea and sky, interrupted only by rowboats." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, D.C., 1886, p. 70)
Homer has painted the sky and water in Small Sloop with subtle variations of blue and white hues. With these colors used throughout the composition, the space of the scene would be difficult to separate without the thin, green line of the coast separating them. Homer uses this application of watercolor as no other artist did at the time. He combined fluid, transparent washes of color and juxtaposed them with vibrant blues and greens. Homer has painted a watercolor of great beauty and peacefulness as well as a work showcasing his unique style of an almost abstract work using his talent for color. Using washes of paint, Homer gives the viewer a vivid sense of his surroundings and the feeling of the seacoast that so greatly affected him.
Finally, these Gloucester works also marked a moment of personal triumph for the artist. "If the summer 1873 was a period of nascent learning," writes D. Scott Atkinson, "the summer of 1880--devoted exclusively to watercolor--was one of culminating maturation. The long apprenticeship that had begun in Gloucester concluded there with a group of watercolors demonstrating Homer's command of the medium and breadth of vision." As Cooper has emphasized, "to most of Homer's audience the largeness of conception and veracity of feeling made these watercolors the finest works he had yet shown in any medium." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, Chicago, Illinois, 1990, p. 53; Winslow Homer Watercolors, p, 119)
This work will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonné of the works of Winslow Homer.
The magnificent series of watercolors that Winslow Homer developed during the 1870s and 1880 in the harbor town of Gloucester, Massachusetts is recognized as some of the artist's finest work. The summer of 1880, the time Small Sloop was painted, was one of great experimentation and productivity for the artist. That year, Homer had given up illustration and devoted much of his attention to depicting light and atmosphere in his paintings. He lived in almost complete solitude in a lighthouse on Ten Pound Island in the center of Gloucester Harbor, and he spent the summer painting the harbor and its inhabitants.
In Small Sloop, Winslow Homer's feeling of isolation living in the lighthouse, is depicted as the small boat sails tranquilly alone on the placid water. Homer has emphasized the vastness of the surrounding landscape by painting the sloop diminutive compared to the water and the sky. With the use of a low horizon line and emptiness of the composition, Homer continues to accentuate the open space of the sea. These broad areas of sky and water not only suggest Homer's reverence for the landscape, but also suggest he intended to explore the technical possibilities of painting this composition.
Helen A. Cooper notes, "...the achievements of the summer of 1880 are found above all in watercolors distinguished by fluid, saturated washes, brilliant light, and reductiveness of composition. Light and color now fascinated Homer more than ever, and in sheet after sheet he experimented with washes of various intensities. The handling became bolder, and the compositions stronger and simpler than in his earlier plein air sketches. In one group of works the compositional structure becomes almost two dimensional-reduced to parallel bars of land, sea and sky, interrupted only by rowboats." (Winslow Homer Watercolors, Washington, D.C., 1886, p. 70)
Homer has painted the sky and water in Small Sloop with subtle variations of blue and white hues. With these colors used throughout the composition, the space of the scene would be difficult to separate without the thin, green line of the coast separating them. Homer uses this application of watercolor as no other artist did at the time. He combined fluid, transparent washes of color and juxtaposed them with vibrant blues and greens. Homer has painted a watercolor of great beauty and peacefulness as well as a work showcasing his unique style of an almost abstract work using his talent for color. Using washes of paint, Homer gives the viewer a vivid sense of his surroundings and the feeling of the seacoast that so greatly affected him.
Finally, these Gloucester works also marked a moment of personal triumph for the artist. "If the summer 1873 was a period of nascent learning," writes D. Scott Atkinson, "the summer of 1880--devoted exclusively to watercolor--was one of culminating maturation. The long apprenticeship that had begun in Gloucester concluded there with a group of watercolors demonstrating Homer's command of the medium and breadth of vision." As Cooper has emphasized, "to most of Homer's audience the largeness of conception and veracity of feeling made these watercolors the finest works he had yet shown in any medium." (Winslow Homer in Gloucester, Chicago, Illinois, 1990, p. 53; Winslow Homer Watercolors, p, 119)
This work will be included in the forthcoming Spanierman Gallery/CUNY/Goodrich/Whitney catalogue raisonné of the works of Winslow Homer.