Month: August 2022

Louise Bourgeois’s Guarantee of Sanity

Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is now over. If you missed it, this is one of the few places you can still see a bit of it. If you appreciate that, please donate to support it. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Show Seen: Louise Bourgeois: Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In spite of having seen at least two prior shows of her work, until the moment I walked in through the entrance, above, I had no idea that Louise Bourgeois was also a Painter. This wonderfully concise show proved a revelation. Her Paintings, which predate her well-known Sculpture, turn out to be every bit as unique, personal, and captivating as her free-standing pieces.

The Runaway Girl, 1938, Oil, charcoal and pencil on canvas. After marrying in Paris, Louise moved to NYC. She came to feel guilt about her sudden departure. Here, she shows herself, with long hair as usual, suitcase in hand, with symbolic references to what she left behind in the background as she floats over jagged rocks, implying a difficult path.

“The Runaway Girl who never grew up…
I do not need a safety net,
Breakfast, big lunch or afternoon snack
I do not need any visitors, telephone
Calls or small mash notes…
I don’t need anything, I don’t confuse anything.
I can wait, I am not afraid. I am grown up.
Nothing is missing.”
Louise Bourgeois1

They’re also as open-ended, and each is autobiographical, beginning with The Runaway Girl, 1938, at the entrance. Beyond her guilt at running away was the pain she suffered discovering her father’s affair with Louise’s nanny- a dual betrayal. “Fear and pain were her main subjects,” her friend, the Art historian Robert Storr said2.

Yves Tanguy, Title Unknown, 1926, Oil on canvas with string and collage. This is about as close as I’ve come in looking for a predecessor to Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings. Seen at The Met. Not in the show.

Some Art historians mention Surrealism as a possible influence on Ms. Bourgeois’s Paintings. Personally, I don’t see it. The Surrealists largely Painted fantasies, dreams and nightmares. Ms. Bourgeois works from her life and her own experiences, even when they take imaginary forms. I don’t consider this Surrealism. The same was said about Chagall, who also worked largely from his own life experiences. Frankly, like Chagall’s, her Paintings don’t remind me of anyone else’s. The great Charlotte Salomon Painted her life, too, at the same moment Louise Bourgeois was (until Ms. Solomon was murdered by the Nazis in 1943). Ms Salomon’s work seems closer to Chagall’s, stylistically, than to Louise Bourgeois’s Paintings to me. Given all that went on in Art just in the first half of the 20th century, creating a unique style is pretty remarkable, and, along with the stellar quality of the work, begin the list of things she should be given more credit for. A good number of these pieces linger in my mind weeks after the show closed- like a person you encounter who has much on his or her mind and much to say, but didn’t say it out loud at the time.

Untitled, 1945, left, Painting: Red on White, 1945, center and Untitled, 1944, right

Louise was born on Christmas, 1911, left France for NYC in 1938, and lived many of her final years until her passing in 2010 around the corner from where I live now, unbeknownst to me.

For much of the last part of her life, Louise lived and worked in the two buildings to the immediate left of the red brick. They now are home to her Foundation. Late in her life Louise moved her bedroom to the first floor, behind one of the two windows, because the stairs were too difficult.

I might have passed her on the street. After she passed away, her home became the HQ of her Easton Foundation, which owns most of the work on display. (Take a look inside here.) Walking by it now, except for some intricate grating on the front door and windows (which was there when she was), it looks just like every other townhouse on the street. Given how unique all her Art is, this is somewhat incongruous.

Themes recur in Louise Bourgeois’s work. One is buildings as seen in each of these pieces. Her series of 4 canvases titled Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, center, will be addressed next. Later, buildings appear without human parts (as in both works to the far left), and they are stand-ins for humans. One building stands for a lonely person. Two separate buildings stands for an estranged couple. Three buildings is a triangle. These would seem to be influenced and inspired by life in the tall building jungle that was, and is, Manhattan, home of “Manhattanhenge” as Neil deGrasse Tyson calls it.

Louise Bourgeois’s Art was largely motivated by “her emotional struggles,” as former MoMA curator and Louise Bourgeois researcher Deborah Wye says, “This was something that plagued her for her whole life. And she said by making a work of art she could make these emotions tangible. Try to understand them. Try to cope with them. Try to hack away at them. And she actually called her art ‘her guarantee of sanity3.’” 

Femme Maison, 1946-7, Oil and ink on linen, occupy the central position in the show, as I show in the prior picture. Femme Maison translates as “woman house,” or “housewife.” In each, a woman is confined within a building, which references a part of the Artist’s past, as her role in society confined her. All 4 figures are naked from the waist down, exposing them to the viewer’s gaze. Her trademark long hair is seen in two. A stunning and singular expression, times 4, of a woman trapped in her role in Art history, at least that known to me.

In what appears to me to be one of the final shows, and perhaps the final gallery show, mounted under Sheena Wagstaff’s tenure as Chair of The Met’s Modern & Contemporary Department, Louise Bourgeois: Paintings is quietly spectacular. The feeling of discovering something “new,”exciting, and previously unknown, when you walk in is quickly reinforced by the variety, and similarities, in her work. Themes emerge. The mystery remains.

“1932,” 1947, Oil on canvas. 1932 was the year Louise’s mother passed away after a long illness. They had been very close, with Louise often serving as her mother’s nurse. Her passing precipitated the first of the Artist’s two suicide attempts, and recurring bouts of depression. According to the wall card, the figure to the left was a “more realistically rendered self-portrait in earlier stages.” Its closed room, its railing, the “anguished(?)” lone figure, and central spotlight, remind me of the settings of many of Francis Bacon’s Paintings that would coincidentally begin at this very moment.

I missed what looks to have been a terrific show at the Jewish Museum, Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter, due to the pandemic, but did see Louise Bourgeois: Holograms show at Cheim & Read and MoMA’s Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait excellent show of her Prints and book work, both in 2017. The variety of the work on view in these four shows (thanks to the Freud’s Daughter catalog) is extraordinary, and all of it is compelling.

Her Paintings were done in the FIRST decade of the SEVEN she eventually spent here. In the end, Louise Bourgeois lived, and worked, in New York City for an unheard of 72 years! In my book, she is what I call an “Ultimate New Yorker,” i.e. someone who has defined both what it is to be a New Yorker and who helped shape NYC in the Arts in my opinion, along with Patti Smith, Miles Davis, and others. Though she professes that these Paintings are “American, from New York,” in the quote above, I don’t sense much of the City in them beyond those that depict apartment buildings that look like those found here. They are more about a person living in the City. Buildings, though, are a metaphor for persons, as I said.

Reparation, 1945, Oil on canvas. Though the Artist shows herself as a girl bringing flowers to her family’s cemetery plot, there is no name on the sparsely Painted stone. So it could reference her mother’s or grandmother’s passing, or in a larger sense, mourn those she left behind.

In each of these de facto “Self-Portraits,” the Artist lays herself and her feelings daringly bare. While her Art didn’t “solve” her problems, it helped. Seeing them now, these Paintings may prove to be a touchstone for viewers, now and in the future, as I expect them to continue to rise in stature. Stylistically, they blend abstraction and realism selectively, often in the same piece. Finally, they also provide fascinating background material for pondering her Sculpture and Prints that followed for the rest of her career.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. World War II, guilt, and here, fear, are subtexts in many of her Paintings. I should say I see fear in this piece, which is one of a few pieces that depict this building in the show, the others having an unstated dread and menace to them as well, perhaps part of her agoraphobia.

Thinking about this show, I couldn’t help but recall the case of Jack Whitten, who had a long career as an important Painter, only to leave a comparably important,  large body of unknown Sculpture behind when he passed in 2018. Louise Bourgeois’ Paintings were shown and known, but it was early in her career, before she attained the status her Sculpture brought her. Both bodies of unknown and lesser known work were shown by Sheena Wagstaff in two of the more fascinating and memorable shows under her remarkable tenure. I imagine that this show may have been originally planned to be installed at The Met Breuer before its sudden closing.

Untitled, Oil on canvas, left, Untitled, Oil and chalk on canvas, right, both 1946. During one visit, another visitor asked me if the work on the left was a guillotine.

In the Press Release announcing the show, Sheena Wagstaff said about it, “To date, it is not widely known that Bourgeois was active as a painter in New York for ten years, a period when the city became a vital international hub amidst critical debates around painting. This exhibition reveals the foundational DNA of the artist’s development of themes that would subsequently burgeon into three dimensions, and preoccupy her for the remainder of her long career.”

All of this was “just” preliminary to her long career as a Sculptor, and work in other mediums. Her late Paintings, like these two, begin to look like her Sculpture. Sculpture, she said, enabled her to see what she was feeling in three dimensions. Deborah Wye said, “She said there was no rivalry between the mediums for her in which she worked. She said she just said the same thing but in different ways4”

And so, “Painting” as painting was over for Ms. Bourgeois.

Moving from Painting to Sculpture. Femme Volage, 1951 left, and Dagger Child, 1947-9, both Painted wood and stainless steel. Woman in the Process of Placing a Beam in her Bag, 1949, Oil on canvas, far left.

Being a self-professed and long-standing Paintings guy I really wish Louise had kept on Painting in addition to Sculpting, but her Muse carried her to 3 dimensions. Some Prints on view in An Unfolding Portrait involve brush work, continuing the thread in a sense. She made Prints for the rest of her life. Her Prints were first the subject of a 1995 MoMA show and their 2017 Unfolding Portrait show, which lives on in its wonderful catalog. Deborah Wye, then a MoMA curator who devoted a large part of her career to studying Louise Bourgeois’s output, curated both Print shows as well the Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at MoMA in 1982, the very first show of its kind given to a woman Artist at MoMA5. She has also created a website of Ms. Bourgeios’s complete prints, which may be seen here.

Fallen Woman (Femme Maison), 1946-7, Oil on canvas. As in almost all of her Paintings, her past and present experiences and the resulting guilt, angst and duality are transformed into wonderfully succinct compositions. “The woman depicted here, visually cut in two by a dark building, embodies the rejection, fragmentation, and abandonment that the artist experienced and feared…,” per the wall card.

“Why have there been no great female Artists?,” is the title of a book, and a question I’ve heard many times over the years. There are, and have been. MANY of them.

Untitled, 1946-7, Oil on canvas. Bacon, de Chirico, Miro, Chagall come to mind when I see this, but none of them combined these elements into one piece before Louise Bourgeois did here in what may be her most iconic Painting, which, again, features her long hair.

The history of Art has been largely written by men, museum collections largely curated by men, to this point. It’s only been this century that that has begun to change. It’s really only since the opening of the global Art market in the late 1980s and the accompanying relentless search for Art of value- anywhere by anyone, that more women Artist have begun to get the attention so many have stood up and demanded for so long. There’s still a long road ahead.

Beyond her iconic Sculpture, her Prints that I saw at MoMA in 2017, her Holograms that I saw the same year, and her Installations, Louise Bourgeois created an important body of Paintings, one that deserves a special place of import among those created by women Artists in the 20th century, as well as by Artists, period. I believe that as time goes on, more and more people, who know her name, but not much about what she did beyond her Spiders, Louise Bourgeois will be an Artist who moves more and more into the mainstream. Her work is so diverse, extending across mediums, techniques and time, that it actually reminds me a bit of one of her contemporaries- Pablo Picasso. That’s said not as a comparison, but to mention the similarities and variety in their work. I would not be one bit surprised to see a Bourgeois/Picasso show one of these days. Maybe MoMA’s next Bourgeois-related show6 show ?

Louise Bourgeois, with her long hair, with Untitled, 1946-7,  on her easel, circa 1946. It’s fascinating to compare what we can see of it in this Photo with the Painting we have, above.

Louise Bourgeois channeled her problems through unending creativity into an extraordinary and extraordinarily varied body of work. In spite of two suicide attempts7 earlier in her life, she overcame everything she lived through and felt about it to survive to be 98! There is much in that, as well as in her work, to inspire others. Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and friend for 30 years, wrote in late 2010 after Louise’s death-

“Though her work was raw self-expression, it was also her way of understanding herself. It has a timeless dynamic that goes way beyond the visual: a profound capacity to awaken in others a heightened consciousness of what it is to be alive.”

Her ceaseless multi-dimensional creativity is up there with Picasso’s, Joan Miro’s, Marcel Duchamp’s and Robert Rauschenberg’s- the giants of endless invention in the 20th century. Add her name to that list if you haven’t. For her own creativity, as well as the quality and timelessness of her Art, it belongs there. 

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is “Cherry-Coloured Funk” by Cocteau Twins from Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990.

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  1. Quoted in Louise Bourgeois, Askew and d’Offay, 2013, p.42. ↩
  2.  Robert Storr, Ted Talks, 5/11/18 ↩
  3. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  4. Deborah Wye, MoMA Talk, 9/17/2017. ↩
  5. In 2018, I published my own list of these in my Yoko Ono piece, since there is no “official” list- still! I wonder why. ↩
  6. Update 9/2/22- Since writing those words I’ve discovered a gallery show, Louise Bourgeois – Pablo Picasso: Anatomies of Desire, was held at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, in 2019. From seeing the catalog, it sure looks like it’s not only an idea who’s time has come, but there is more to mine in it. ↩
  7. per The Met’s wall card for “1932.” I can find no other reference to more than one attempt. ↩

Not Your Father’s Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents is now over. If you missed it, one of the few places you can still see a bit of it is here! If you appreciate that, please donate to keep this site alive. I can no longer create it AND fund it myself. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*-unless otherwise credited)

Ahhh….The summer blockbuster. What would Art life be without one? In spite of covid, we’ve been blessed here in NYC with big and memorable shows the past two summers, though of course, remaining careful is the only way to see one. So, I donned my double masks and went to see this year’s summer-fest, Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents, at The Met.

Winslow & chill…Detail of Lady of Santiago (Girl With a Fan), 1885, Watercolor on paper. Less than one quarter of the whole 8 7/8 by 11 1/2 inch piece is shown. How this is Painted is just stunning. Look at her face! Look at those Palm tree leaves! Not bad for not having any lessons, right? His mother was an accomplished Artist and gave Winslow some help early on, later he took a few lessons in Oils, beyond that, he was self-taught.

Interestingly, and probably purely coincidentally, Winslow Homer turns out to be almost an exact contemporary of the Artist who enthralled me last summer, Paul Cézanne, he of Cézanne Drawing at MoMA: Cézanne, 1839-1906; Homer, 1836-1910! Cézanne was, and remains, one of the most influential Artists of his time. Winslow Homer, though continually popular since he began creating, has not enjoyed the same reputation as a ground-breaker as the French master. To this point.

You’d need a telescope to see The Gulf Stream, center, from the show’s entrance, which announces it as the centerpiece for the entire show. There are a lot of very good Paintings before and after you get to it.

That sound you heard might be the tides beginning to turn after Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents.

The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, from Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862, Wood engraving on paper. A number of Homer’s War pieces compile different scenes he may have witnessed on one of his trips to the front of the Civil War into one composition. I wonder if this is the case here. Homer was about 26 at the time he created this Drawing which was sent back, and then engraved by someone else. (* Not included in Crosscurrents. Smithsonian Museum of American Art Photo)

After early work as a free-lance illustrator covering the genteel life around him, Winslow Homer moved to NYC in 1859, where he took a few lessons in Oil Painting at the National Academy of Design with Frederic Rondel. He took a job as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly right after the Civil War started in April, 1861, and much to his surprise, quickly found himself at the front in Virginia! It was there that he would come into his own, creating a body of War Illustrations that was important, historic, and ground-breaking, becoming, along with renowned Photographers Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner, America’s first visual War reporters.

Crosscurrents begins at this point, in 1863. With 88 Oils and Watercolors, covering the full range of subjects the Artist rendered after he found himself and his direction during the War, and tracing the rest of his long career, the show is centered around The Met’s masterpiece, The Gulf Stream, 1900,1906. Work after work shows the lie to the out-dated standing perception and in its stead reveals how shockingly contemporary Winslow Homer is, 112 years after his death. The feeling one leaves the show with is akin to “How could we have missed so much in Winslow Homer?”

The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Oil on canvas. As time went on, he felt he needed a different medium to express the depth of what he wanted to communicate. So, in 1863, he turned to Oil Painting, a medium he had only briefly studied. The soldier’s jacket lies to the right in this powerful image from the end of the War and the beginning of the Reconstruction. Originally, the scythe’s blade was even longer.

Part of the reason opinions on Winslow Homer haven’t changed is there’s been a lack of big Homer shows, and even Crosscurrents isn’t a full blown retrospective. The Met and National Gallery of Art in Washington had a Homer Retrospective in 1959, which the catalog shows to have had around 130 works. The Whitney had a Homer show in 1974 that had 200 works (per its catalog). For perspective, Winslow Homer created 300 Oil Paintings and 685 Watercolors, plus Prints and Drawings over the course of his career1. 2022 is proving to be a fortuitous time to see 88 Homers. 

Prisoners from the Front, 1866, Oil on canvas. The work that made Winslow Homer’s name, reputation and career. It was then quickly acquired by the young Metropolitan Museum.

Before the War ended, Winslow wound up making multiple trips to the Virginia front. Of one, his mother wrote-

“Winslow went to the war front of Yorktown and camped out about two months. He suffered much, was without food 3 days at a time & all in camp either died or were carried away with typhoid fever- plug tobacco & coffee was the staples…He came home so changed that his best friends did not know him, but is well & all right now2.”

The War forever changed Homer, and his Art. The genteel subjects were gone. To go deeper, he finally turned to Oil Painting in 1863 at the age of 27, fairly old to begin.

Sharpshooter, 1863, Oil on canvas. Not bad for a first Oil Painting, right?

“He was painting by eye, not by tradition; painting what he saw, not what he had been taught to see.” Lloyd Goodrich3

Sharpshooters were, perhaps, the most deadly branch of the Army in the Civil War. The series The Civil War: Brothers Divided, credits sharpshooters with winning the Battle of Gettysburg, and by extension the Civil War4. In Sharpshooter, we see one taking aim. In 1896, Homer recalled-

“I looked through one of their rifles once when they were in a peach orchard in front of Yorktown in April, 1862. The impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I ever think of in connection with the army & I always had a horror of that branch of the service5.“ He included this sketch in his letter-

His very first Oil Painting, Sharpshooter, 1863, opens the show in attention- grabbing fashion. When I look at it, I feel for whoever may be on the other end of the telescope. After seeing the Drawing, I believe that’s what Homer intended.

There it is: right from the very first work, and then time and again, as I walked through the 40+ years of his career covered in Crosscurrents, what stands out for me is his empathy. This is what makes Winslow Homer special in his time, and timely today.

His strikes me as being on the level of the empathy I see in Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, and especially in Goya. All his life he traveled, and many of his pieces reflect things he actually witnessed (some were based on newspaper reports). This combination of observation with his inherent empathy brings an uncanny “realism” to his work, even allowing that some pieces are based on the accounts of others, and some are compilations of events. And so, taking his Paintings as “documentary” is a bit problematic. I prefer to focus on the empathy.

Defiance: Inviting a Shot before Petersburg, 1864, Oil on panel. A Confederate soldier about to get what he’s asking for- two small puffs of smoke are seen at the middle left would seem to indicate the dare accepted, the shots on their way. And so, this is the flip-side of Sharpshooter.

On an adjacent wall, the very next Painting would seem to indicate the Artist may have been thinking similarly. Perhaps, he felt he wanted to be clearer about his intentions, and create a “more direct” work? Here, he shows us the opposite viewpoint. Brilliantly paired in the show. Defiance is utterly remarkable. It’s not like the sharpshooters needed a lot of help.

A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876, Oil on canvas. Seeing this work from 11 years after the end of the War and the middle of the Reconstruction made me wonder if I’ve seen a more powerful 19th century American Painting. Who else Painted anything like this before 1900?

Then, in the period after the War, the Reconstruction, Winslow Homer did something no other Artist I know of did- He made Paintings showing the life of the newly freed Black men and women, and in the process created a unique record of part of their experience, and race relations in the country, at the time. This is another thing that makes him a ground-breaking Artist and gives hm much relevance, today. In A Visit From the Old Mistress, 1876, volumes are said in the eyes and body language. Early on, the Mistress held a red flower in her right hand, which the Artist Painted over after changing his mind. Over time, a hint of the red has become visible near her shoulder. Given that much (but not all) of what he shows us are scenes he witnessed, I’m left to wonder if he saw this scene and the one below. If not, how could he have Painted them so convincingly? His empathy powerfully comes through, yet as strong as it is, here and in all his work, he never hits the viewer over the head with it, and it is his subtlety that I believe has caused the appreciation of his empathy, power and brilliance to be somewhat under-appreciated for so long.

Dressing for the Carnival, 1877, Oil on canvas. A tour de force in so many ways beginning with color and ending up in a timeless meditation on so many things. Who else Painted anything like this?

In 1873, Winslow Homer produced his first Watercolor (at about 37 years of age!). They would become both rightly revered for their virtuosity among any done during his lifetime and extremely popular, helping the Artist survive. No small thing since after Prisoners from the Front, he struggled to regain the same level of success with his Oils, which continually disturbed him, no matter how popular his Watercolors became. Along the way, his focus changed. He turned to the sea. First, in Cullercoats, England, than in New England, and finally in the Gulf Stream- the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba and Florida. Based in Prouts Neck, Maine, he regularly traveled south to avoid the harsh northern winters. That might  be why there was only one Winslow Homer snow scene in the show!

Eight Bells, 1886, Oil on canvas, struck me as endemic of Homer’s work on man & the sea. Here, two sailors take measurements. Man trying to understand the sea.

Of course, Winslow Homer is rightly revered for his sea pictures. Along with the intense, timeless drama in many of these pieces, what has always stood out for me is his mastery of rendering the sea itself. Crosscurrents includes quite a few highlights, including some daring sea rescues Homer witnessed or read about. Regarded so at the time, Winslow Homer remains one of the real masters of sea Paintings. No mean feat in a country about 100 years old at the time in view of the long history of sea Art in many other countries.

Oranges on a Branch, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Hypnotically beautiful, during one visit, another visitor nearby railed against the inclusion of the building on the lower right in this rare Homer Still Life. Oranges were something of a delicacy at the time, and a treat as a staple at meals in the Bahamas, they would seem exotic to many contemporary American viewers.

As darkly hued as many of his Oil Paintings are, as a result of his yearly winter trips south, all of a sudden come his Watercolors that just explode with light and color.

Native Hut at Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. During his trips, Homer kept a close eye on the local population and had a gift for capturing their lives in extraordinary works like this, a scene he may have seen on a walk from his luxury hotel. While picturesque elements of the piece would appeal to American viewers, the condition of the local’s lives is front and center. Again, something not many were doing in 1885.

Homer’s Watercolors were extremely popular with collectors, and even he seemed to get caught up in it. He’s quoted in the show saying-

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”

At The Met, they indeed glisten with the beautiful light he found in the Bahamas and elsewhere on the Gulf Stream. But, for me, it’s his Oils that are the revelation, and which largely serve to rewrite our perception of him. Homer followed sales of his Oils closely, and took the results personally, particularly when they were misunderstood. His Watercolors cast his subjects in a different light, no pun intended, and seem to me to be more meditative, while his Oils bring the power.

A Garden in Nassau, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Another poignant example shows a child outside a walled private garden. A small detail- Homer’s watercolor palm leaves are always amazing, and offset the sparseness of the wall.

Still, a number of those on view, like these two above, get to the same power, empathy and subtlety, seen in his Oils.

Shark Fishing, 1885, Watercolor on paper. Ummm…I think they’re going to need a bigger boat. The shark is similar to one seen in The Gulf Stream, 15 years later.

In 1885, while in the Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer may have seen and recorded a boat in distress in a sketchbook. The sketch was in the show, as were a number of fascinating Watercolors that seem to reveal something of the development of The Gulf Stream Oil Painting over the next 21 years. Not all of the pieces I’m showing here were in the show’s Gulf Stream section. I’m including Shark Fishing, above, (which is not a disaster work like the others), due to the similarities between the shark in The Gulf Stream. It also includes two Black sailors.

Sharks (The Derelict), 1885, Watercolor on paper. It would seem that this was a work that informed The Gulf Stream, with many of its familiar compositional elements, minus the sailor.

The Gulf Stream Oil was displayed in 1900, then Homer reworked it in 1906. (Possibly in response to criticism?) The Met quickly acquired it the same year.

The Gulf Stream, c.1889, Watercolor on paper. What would be the final composition is taking shape.

In this version, there is no sign of rescue, which is closer to the Oil as it was originally displayed. No water spout to the right. The sailor looks down in the direction of the sharks.

The Gulf Stream, 1900, 1906, Oil on canvas. It was praised and condemned early on. From The Met’s Audio Guide- “When the Worchester Art Museum was considering its purchase, two women Trustees objected to the unpleasantness of the subject. Homer wrote to his agent- “The boat and sharks are of very little consequence. You can tell these ladies that the unfortunate negro who is by now so dazed and parboiled will be rescued and return to his friends and home and ever after live happily.” In 1906 he added the ship on the upper left horizon. 

Not many images exist of The Gulf Stream before his 1906 modifications of it, most noticeably adding the ship on the horizon in the upper left in 1906. A print displayed nearby shows the work as it originally was displayed in 1900 without it. Was it added in response to the worry for the lone sailor expressed to him by viewers? In a letter to his dealer the Artist vehemently expressed that “the subject of this piece is its title.” It’s hard for me to see one subject in it. I’m puzzled by how the man is Painted, and why he is looking off to our right. Perhaps, Homer felt that looking straight ahead, as he does in the Watercolor above, was too obvious. Some see the Painting as being inspired by the recent death of Homer’s father. Yet, he had produced Watercolors of this subject 15 years before. Whatever the case is, it again features a Black man. Perhaps the most iconic American Painting to do so from its time, or earlier. Or, from substantially later, for that matter.

Natural Bridge, Bermuda, 1901, Watercolor on paper. It’s hard for me to look at this and not think of Cézanne’s rock formations I showed in my Cézanne Drawing piece his last year that were done at almost the same time.

“If a man wants to be an artist, he should never look at pictures.” Winslow Homer quoted in Lloyd Goodrich’s Winslow Homer, P.21.

Winslow Homer kept to himself. His life is in his work. He refused to cooperate with his biographer and so very little is known about his possible influences. Writers and critics have been left to wonder about them, and I do, too. He spent 10 months living in Paris when much was going on in the Art world there. Yet, almost nothing is known about how he felt about what he saw. I see bits of Manet, Monet, Cézanne and Goya in his work. Is it coincidental?

Near Andersonville, 1865-66, Oil on canvas. The wall card speaks of the “Black woman emerging from a darkened interior, standing on a threshold and contemplating an uncertain future” near Andersonville, the site of an horrific Confederate prison.

Strong women are also featured in Homer’s work. The Black woman in the stunning early Oil, Near Andersonville, above, and women he encountered in the seaside communities he lived in in Cullercoats, England, and New England, like this one-

The Gale, 1883-93, Oil on canvas.

Again, something not many other Artists were doing at the time.

Right and Left, 1909, Oil on canvas. Homer’s next to last Oil Painting.

Late in his life, he turned his attention to mortality and the struggle of life and death, animal versus animal and man versus animal, as here, and of course earlier, he had depicted the struggle of man versus man, in the Civil War, and man versus the sea. It takes an effort to find the hunters in the piece, since the work is designed to show us the scene from the victim’s viewpoint, like Defiance, shown earlier. This is something unique in my experience to Homer in Art.

As if ALL of that isn’t enough, Winslow Homer’s compositions continually surprise me with their originality. Right and Left being one classic example among many. Something he is not generally appreciated for.

Winslow Homer with The Gulf Stream and his palette in his Prouts Neck, Maine Studio, c. 1899-1900

Francis Bacon said whether something was art or not wouldn’t be known for 75 to 100 years. I’ve always felt it took longer. Still, at about 100 years since his passing, it seems to me that Winslow Homer’s stock is beginning to rise to about mark twain (2 fathoms, or 12 feet, the depth the river must be for a riverboat to pass safely), also the pen name of almost an EXACT contemporary of Winslow Homer- Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910, being 1 year older, and passing in the same year! Like Mark Twain is, for many among American Novelists, in my book, Winslow Homer is just about at the top of innovative and important 19th century American Painters, for his Paintings, his mastery of Watercolor, and his illustrations.

Regardless of how the future looks at him, it seem to me that he’s certainly an Artist with a lot to say to us today. His technique catches the eye, then his subtlety and empathy hold the mind, and the heart.

*- Soundtrack for this Piece is- (“I ain’t gonna work on) Maggie’s Farm (no more),” by Bob Dylan from Bringing it All Back Home, 1965.

This Piece is dedicated to Amy Harding (who made a long trip to see this show, particularly admiring Dressing for the Carnival), for her help in getting this piece published and her long-time support!

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. According to Helen A. Cooper, Winslow Homer Watercolors, P.16 ↩
  2. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation, P.34 ↩
  3. Lloyd Goodrich, Winslow Homer, 1973, P.17 ↩
  4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5427912/ ↩
  5. https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/army-potomac-sharp-shooter-picket-duty-10711 ↩