A Veteran in a New Field,
c.1865
Winslow Homer
1836 - 1910
Winslow Homer c. 1890
Winslow Homer
(February 24, 1836 – September
29, 1910)
• an American landscape painter and
printmaker, best known for his marine
subjects.
• He is considered one of the foremost
painters in 19th century America and a
preeminent figure in American art.
• Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, Homer
was the second of three sons of Charles Savage
Homer and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from
long lines of New Englanders.
• His mother was a gifted amateur watercolorist
and Homer’s first teacher, and she and her son
had a close relationship throughout their lives.
Homer took on many of her traits, including her
quiet, strong-willed, terse, sociable nature; her
dry sense of humor; and her artistic talent.
• Largely self-taught, Homer began his
career working as a commercial
illustrator.
• He took up oil painting and produced
major studio works characterized by the
weight and density he exploited from the
medium.
• He also worked extensively in watercolor,
creating a fluid and prolific oeuvre,
primarily chronicling his working vacations.
• Homer had a happy childhood, growing up
mostly in then rural Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
• He was an average student, but his art
talent was on display early.
• Homer’s father was a volatile, restless
businessman who was always looking to
“make a killing”.
• When Homer was thirteen, Charles gave
up the hardware store business to seek a
fortune in the California gold rush.
• When that failed, Charles left his family
and went to Europe to raise capital for
other get-rich-quick schemes that didn’t
materialize.
• After Homer’s high school graduation, his
father saw an ad in the newspaper and
arranged for an apprenticeship.
• Homer’s apprenticeship to a Boston
commercial lithographer at the age of 19,
was a formative but “treadmill experience”.
• He worked repetitively on sheet music
covers and other commercial work for two
years.
• By 1857, his freelance career was
underway after he turned down an offer to
join the staff of Harper's Weekly.
“From the time I took my nose off that
lithographic stone”, Homer later stated,
“I have had no master, and never shall
have any.”
• Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted
nearly twenty years.
• He contributed to magazines such as
Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly
• The market for illustrations was growing rapidly,
and when fads and fashions were changing
quickly.
• His early works, mostly commercial engravings
of urban and country social scenes, are
characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms,
dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively
figure groupings — qualities that remained
important throughout his career.
• His quick success was mostly due to this strong
understanding of graphic design and also to the
adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.
Homer's studio
• In 1859, he opened a studio in the Tenth
Street Studio Building in New York City,
the artistic and publishing capital of the
United States.
• Until 1863 he attended classes at the
National Academy of Design, and studied
briefly with Frédéric Rondel, who taught
him the basics of painting.
• In only about a year of self-training, Homer
was producing excellent oil work.
• His mother tried to raise family funds to
send him to Europe for further study but
instead Harper's sent Homer to the front
lines of the American Civil War (1861–
1865), where he sketched battle scenes
and camp life, the quiet moments as well
as the murderous ones.
• His initial sketches were of the camp,
commanders, and army of the famous
Union officer, Major General George B.
McClellan, at the banks of the Potomac
River in October, 1861.
• Although the drawings did not get much
attention at the time, they mark Homer's
expanding skills from illustrator to painter.
• Like with his urban scenes, Homer also
illustrated women during war time, and
showed the effects of the war on the home
front.
• The war work was dangerous and
exhausting.
• Back at his studio, however, Homer would
regain his strength and re-focus his artistic
vision.
• He set to work on a series of war-related
paintings based on his sketches, among
them Sharpshooter on Picket Duty (1862),
Home, Sweet Home (1863), and Prisoners
from the Front (1866)
Sharpshooter on Picket Duty
Home Sweet Home
Prisoners from the Front
• He exhibited Home, Sweet Home at the
National Academy and its remarkable
critical reception resulted in its quick sale.
• Homer was elected into the National
Academy as an Associate Academician,
then a full Academician in 1865.
• After the war, Homer turned his attention
primarily to scenes of childhood and young
women, reflecting nostalgia for simpler
times, both his own and the nation as a
whole.
• His Crossing the Pasture (1871–1872)
depicts two boys who idealize brotherhood
with the hope of a united future after the
war that pitted brother against brother.
• At nearly the beginning of his painting
career, the twenty-seven year old Homer
demonstrated a maturity of feeling,
depth of perception, and mastery of
technique which was immediately
recognized.
• His realism was objective, true to
nature, and emotionally controlled.
One critic wrote, …
“Winslow Homer is one of those few
young artists who make a decided
impression of their power with their
very first contributions to the
Academy...He at this moment wields a
better pencil, models better, colors
better, than many whom, were it not
improper, we could mention as regular
contributors to the Academy.”
Critics wrote of Home, Sweet
Home specifically,
“There is no clap-trap about it. The delicacy and
strength of emotion which reign throughout this
little picture are not surpassed in the whole
exhibition.” “It is a work of real feeling, soldiers in
camp listening to the evening band, and thinking
of the wives and darlings far away. There is no
strained effect in it, no sentimentality, but a
hearty, homely actuality, broadly, freely, and
simply worked out.”
Early landscapes and
watercolors
• After exhibiting at the National Academy of
Design, Homer finally traveled to Paris, France
in 1867 where he remained for a year.
• His most praised early painting, Prisoners from
the Front, was on exhibit at the Exposition
Universelle in Paris at the same time.
• He did not study formally but he practiced
landscape painting while continuing to work for
Harper's, depicting scenes of Parisian life.
Prisoners from the Front
• Homer painted about a dozen small
paintings during the stay. Although he
arrived in France at a time of new fashions
in art, Homer's main subject for his
paintings was peasant life, showing more
of an alignment with the established
French Barbizon school and the artist
Millet than with newer artists Manet and
Courbet.
Manet
• Though his interest in depicting natural
light parallels that of the early
impressionists, there is no evidence of
direct influence as he was already a pleinair painter in America and had already
evolved a personal style which was much
closer to Manet than Monet.
Monet
• Unfortunately, Homer was very private about his
personal life and his methods (even denying his
first biographer any personal information or
commentary), but his stance was clearly one of
independence of style and a devotion to
American subjects.
• As his fellow artist Eugene Benson wrote,
Homer believed that artists “should never look at
pictures” but should “stutter in a language of
their own.”
• Throughout the 1870s Homer continued
painting mostly rural or idyllic scenes of
farm life, children playing, and young
adults courting, including Country School
(1871) and The Morning Bell (1872).
• In 1875, Homer quit working as a
commercial illustrator and vowed to
survive on his paintings and watercolors
alone.
• Despite his excellent critical reputation, his
finances continued to remain precarious.
Country School
The Morning Bell
• His popular 1872 painting, Snap-the-Whip,
was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial
Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
as was one of his finest and most famous
paintings Breezing Up (1876). Of his work
at this time, Henry James wrote:
• "We frankly confess that we detest his
subjects...he has chosen the least pictorial
range of scenery and civilization; he has
resolutely treated them as if they were
pictorial...and, to reward his audacity, he
has incontestably succeeded."
Snap-The-Whip
• Many disagreed with James. Breezing Up,
Homer’s iconic painting of a father and
three boys out for a spirited sail, received
wide praise.
• The New York Tribune wrote, “There is no
picture in this exhibition, nor can we
remember when there has been a picture
in any exhibition, that can be named
alongside this.”
• Visits to Petersburg, Virginia around 1876
resulted in paintings of rural African American
life.
• The same straightforward sensibility which
allowed Homer to distill art from these potentially
sentimental subjects also yielded the most
unaffected views of African American life at the
time, as illustrated in Dressing for the Carnival
(1877) and A Visit from the Old Mistress (1876)
Dressed for the Carnival
A Visit from the Old Mistress
• Homer started painting with watercolors on
a regular basis in 1873 during a summer
stay in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
• From the beginning, his technique was
natural, fluid and confident, demonstrating
his innate talent for a difficult medium.
• His impact would be revolutionary.
• Here, again, the critics were puzzled at first, "A
child with an ink bottle could not have done
worse.
• Another critic said that Homer “made a sudden
and desperate plunge into water color painting”.
• But his watercolors proved popular and
enduring, and sold more readily, improving his
financial condition considerably.
Schooner at Sunset
Sailing a Dory
House in Santigo Cuba
Blackboard
The Fog Warning
Eight Bells
• After General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at
Appomattox in April 1865, the Union and
Confederate armies were peacefully
disbanded.
• The soldiers who had survived the ordeal
were free to go home and resume their
pre-war occupations.
• Painted through summer and fall 1865, not long
after the nation came to grips with Robert E.
Lee's surrender and mourned President
Lincoln's assassination—both of which
occurred during the second week of April—
Homer's canvas shows an emblematic farmer
who is a Union veteran, as signified by his
discarded jacket and canteen at the lower right.
• The painting seems to blend several related
narratives.
• Most soldiers had been farmers before the war.
• This man, who has returned to his field, holds an
old-fashioned scythe that evokes the Grim
Reaper, recalls the war's harvest of death, and
expresses grief at Lincoln's murder.
• The redemptive feature is the bountiful
wheat—a northern crop—which could
connote the Union's victory.
• With its dual references to death and life,
Homer's iconic composition offers a
powerful meditation on America's
sacrifices and its potential for recovery.
• The Veteran in a New Field depicts one
of those Civil War veterans recently
returned from the front, harvesting a field
of grain in the midday sun.
• The wheat has grown high, and the field
stretches all the way to the horizon;
• An unusually bountiful crop had, in fact,
marked the end of the war.
• The farmer’s military jacket and canteen
(with an insignia that identifies him as a
former Union soldier) lie discarded in the
foreground, almost covered by fallen
stalks of grain.
• Winslow Homer completed The Veteran
in a New Field in the autumn of 1865,
only a few months after Appomattox.
• The artist was a sort of veteran himself,
having served on the front as an illustrator
for the New York periodical Harper’s
Weekly.
• In the sketches he made to accompany
military reports, Homer tended to focus on
the commonplace activities of a soldier’s
life rather than the climax of combat.
• When he returned to civilian life and began
to paint in oil, Homer continued to favor
themes from ordinary life, such as this
image of a soldier resuming work in the
fields.
• The optimistic spirit of Homer’s painting
only makes its darker undertones more
moving.
• The “new field” of the title can’t mean this
field of grain, which is obviously mature
and ready to harvest.
• It must refer instead to the change in the
veteran’s occupation—which necessarily
calls to mind his previous activity on the
battlefield.
• Because some of the bloodiest battles of
the Civil War had been fought in wheat
fields, fields of grain, in popular
consciousness, were associated with
fields of fallen soldiers.
• One particularly disturbing photograph of
soldiers who had died in battle at
Gettysburg was published with the title
“A Harvest of Death.”
• In keeping with those undertones, Homer’s
veteran handles a single-bladed scythe.
• By 1865, that simple farming implement
was already out of date; a farmer would
have used the more efficient cradle to
mow a field that size.
• In the original version of the painting, the
veteran did work with a cradled scythe (its
outline is faintly visible on the left side of
the canvas), but Homer evidently decided
to paint it out.
• He replaced an emblem of modern
technology with the more archaic tool, and
gave a picture of a farmer in his field an
unsettling reference to the work of the
Grim Reaper, the age-old personification
of death.
The Veteran in a New Field refers both to
the desolation caused by the war and
the country’s hope for the future.
It summons up the conflicting emotions
that took hold of Americans—
Relief that the Civil War was over,
and
Grief for the many lives that had been lost.
Nor did the loss of lives end on the
battlefield;
Only days after Appomattox came the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The nation sank into a collective state of
mourning.
• The Veteran in a New Field thus takes on
another dimension,
• An expression of despair over the
senseless death of a great president.
• The image of a soldier returning to his
farm would have reassured Homer’s
audience that life went on.
The veteran appears to have set aside his
Army training along with what remained of
his military uniform to harvest a field that
once again yields the gift of golden
wheat, which in Christianity is a symbol of
salvation.
• Even in the aftermath of the worst
disasters, the artist seems to say, life has
the capacity to restore itself.
Influence
• Homer never taught in a school or privately, but
his works strongly influenced succeeding
generations of American painters for their direct
and energetic interpretation of man's stoic
relationship to an often neutral and sometimes
harsh wilderness.
• American illustrator and teacher Howard Pyle
revered Homer and encouraged his students to
study him.
• His student and fellow illustrator, N. C. Wyeth
(and through him Andrew Wyeth and Jamie
Wyeth), shared the influence and appreciation,
even following Homer to Maine for inspiration.
• The elder Wyeth’s respect for his antecedent
was “intense and absolute,” and can be
observed in his early work Mowing (1907).
The Mowing, by NC Weyth
• Perhaps Homer's austere individualism is
best captured in his admonition to artists:
• "Look at nature, work independently, and
solve your own problems."
The Lifeline
Civil War Dresses
Glouster
Come Up From the Fields Father
• Come up from the fields, father, here's a
letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother, here's
a letter from thy dear son. Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower
and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves
fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and
grapes on the trellis'd vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the
vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees
were lately buzzing?)
• Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent
after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful,
and the farm prospers well. Down in the
fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come, father, come
at the daughter's call,
And come to the entry, mother, to the front
door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something
ominous,
her steps trembling,
• She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor
adjust her cap. Open the envelope quickly,
0 this is not our son's writing, yet his name
is sign'd,
0 a strange hand writes for our dear son,
0 stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black,
she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast,
cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better. Ah, now the single figure
to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all
its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head,
very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans. Grieve not so, dear mother (the
just-grown
daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and
dismay'd),
• See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will
soon be better. Alas, poor boy, he will never be
better (nor maybe
needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),
While they stand at home at the door he is
dead already,
The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be
better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night
fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with
one deep longing,
0 that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent
from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead
son.
-Walt Whitman
Essay Question 1
• Because a seemingly dead seed buried in the
ground rises as a new plant, grain can be a
symbol of rebirth or new beginnings.
• What might a bountiful field of wheat represent?
• What might this suggest about the country after
the Civil War?
Essay Question 2
• If this man had been in a grain field the
previous year, what would he have been
doing?
Essay Question 3
• Please identify the symbolism found in the
painting, A Veteran in a New Field.