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Winslow Homer exhibition stops at FWMoA in July

Groundbreaking research gives new insight into Homer’s inspirations

By Eddie Torres

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-06-14


An exhibition of 240 celebrated works by American artist Winslow Homer opens July 28 at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and will be on view through September 23.

Winslow Homer is arguably the most popular and important artist and illustrator of 19th century America. The exhibition Winslow Homer: From Poetry to Fiction, The Engraved Works has been in planning for more than 20 years beginning in 1995, when curator Reilly Rhodes, then director of the National Art Museum of Sport, took notice of the immense range of Homer material that was available to museums and collectors in the rare book and print shops of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

“The opportunity for museums to showcase these works on paper offers enormous storytelling potential that people of all ages can appreciate and enjoy,” said Rhodes. “Homer is easy to connect with and to understand. The content is straightforward and masterfully expressed. There was never any doubt, even in his youth, that Homer was a highly gifted and talented artist among his peers.”

Winslow Homer: From Poetry to Fiction, The Engraved Works provides a rare opportunity to view an extensive collection of engravings by Homer when he was between the ages of 19 and 39. The works are dated 1855 to 1875, and span over one-third of the artist’s creative career. Several never before exhibited period photographs and handwritten documents from the period have been added that were not included in the inaugural exhibition at The Butler Institute of American Art in 2017. The source for many of these photographs came from descendants of farm families in the Hudson River Valley where Homer painted and made sketches for wood engravings for the pictorial press, including Harper’s Weekly and Every Saturday.

The exhibition is organized into twelve thematic areas that cover subject matter that most appealed to the artist. These themes include poetry and literature, scenes of rural America, leisure time pursuits, holidays, seaside views, the sporting life, courtship and romance, America’s youth, the changing role of women, and activities of soldiers behind the scenes during the Civil War.

Homer owned two cameras in his lifetime and was known to have made drawings from photographs for his monochromatic images and oil paintings early in his career. Photography was in its infancy for most of the nineteenth century, unable, in most cases, to provide sharp, clear images of movement without blurred, out of focus results. Not until the development of faster shutter speeds could photography produce successful still images of movement. Homer was able to create scenes and actions that suggests movement and liveliness in his compositions.

The Engraved Works brings the past alive in a way that not only informs, but entertains with brief, yet detailed descriptions of what the artist wanted to convey. Homer’s lively focus on urban and rural day-to-day activities, his optimism for the future of the nation and America’s energized youth, and his thought-provoking depictions of wartime conflict are skillfully presented through his engravings.


Winslow Homer: From Poetry to Fiction, The Engraved Works
Fort Wayne Museum of Art
July 28-September 23, 2018.

Fwmoa.org

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