It was quite the event! Art lovers from across the nation and beyond flocked to Chicago. Linda and I sought out a low cost flight to Midway and found a hotel deal at the Loop's famous Silversmith Hotel, just a short stroll to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Winslow Homer is regarded by many as America's greatest painter of the 19th century.

Although there is no record of Winslow Homer's ever meeting Mark Twain, their lives and careers are strikingly parallel. They were born a year apart, Twain in 1835, Homer in 1836. Both explored the American experience. Both were influential to artists who followed them. Both died in 1910.

Homer was mostly a self taught artist, although he learned a great deal of technique from his mother, a skilled amateur watercolorist in her own right. He apprenticed as a lithographer in Boston. In 1861 at the age of 25, he was a free-lance Civil War illustrator-correspondent for Harper's Weekly. He became an adept visual storyteller, skilled at symbolism and nuance within American Realism. Throughout his career, he was unparalleled in his ability to tell stories visually.

He is known for his paintings of New England, the Maine Coast, and the Caribbean. His earlier illustrations of The Civil War and the Reconstruction period were most impactful showing both the violent action and extreme tedious boredom of soldiering, and demonstrating a deep understanding of and compassion for America's African Americans, both during slavery and afterward in Reconstruction.

His influence extended to the artists of the Ashcan School, artists Robert Henri, George Luks, William Glackens, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn. A bit later, he was admired by George Bellows and Edward Hopper as well as the famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth, his son Andrew Wyeth and grandson Jamie Wyeth.

Growing up in the midst of New England's abolitionist movement, young Winslow Homer experienced the fire and passion of those demanding an end to slavery. By the time of the Civil War, Homer's opinions and passions on the subject of abolition had been forged and sharpened. In his Civil War and Reconstruction pictures, he exhibits an enormous sensitivity and depth of compassion when he depicts the plight of recently freed slaves. The weight of their condition is mixed with his optimism for their future. His images shows their character in the face of hardship, and their worthiness and dignity as people.

Although photography existed during the Civil War, it was still in its infancy, impractical for reporting on an active army in the field. Illustrators were still the best option. By 1861, Winslow Homer was a seasoned illustrator. He was chosen, one of 30 or so artists to be embedded with the Union Army charged with the task of reporting on the war for an emerging visual press.

Homer was not just a skilled artist, he was a keen and thoughtful observer. In observing and recording battle scenes, he had to be daring, quick on the draw so to speak, and able to face the rigors of possible injury, starvation, and disease. The work was dangerous and tiring. Homer made two or three extended visits to the front. He traveled to Alexandria, Virginia in 1861, sketching the 6th Pennsylvania Calvary. He spent two months with the New York 5th Infantry in Virginia near Fort Munroe. and he was in Yorktown with "Duryee's Zouaves" (a group of Union soldiers who dressed like the Zouaves, a light infantry regiment of the French Army located in North Africa.)

Homer never depicted dead soldiers nor did he glorify battle. Homer's battle scenes showed the adrenalin drenching horror of war, the fierceness of close quartered combat where men slashed, stabbed and raged onward or fell to a gruesome death. His best known painting is Sharpshooter, known by its longer title The Army of the Potomac - A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty. In this picture, the sharpshooter is balanced uncomfortably on a branch lining up a target through his scope. He does not glorify the sharpshooter. Homer merely depicts him as grim technician. Homer later wrote of sharpshooters, "I always had a horror of that branch of service."

Like most soldiers, Homer grew a beard during the war. Shaving in the field was a luxury. He wore dirty clothes and endured a soldier's diet. He witnessed a bayonet charge at the Battle of Seven Pines, and witnessed a field hospital where surgeons dealt with the wounded with all their amputations and deaths. In the long tedious periods between battle scenes, Homer pictured the long periods of boring camp life, men opening Christmas boxes from home, tugging on the wishbone after an Army Thanksgiving dinner, and men playing football in camp.

He was liked by the soldiers, but not so much by the officers who questioned the accuracy of his illustrations. But through his illustrations, thanks to Harper's Weekly, his scenes of the war were seen near and far. His reputation and fame grew. Winslow Homer was known throughout America and even as far as London.

After the war, Homer addressed the issue of transition, how soldiers returned home and assumed their lives in peacetime. Most poignant of these paintings was the Veteran in the Field. Here, a returning soldier has put down his uniform and weapons, and now swings his blade harvesting wheat. In Croquet Scene, well dressed women engage in a leisurely game of croquet, a quiet recreational activity which would not have happened with the deprivations of war.

Homer chose to paint what other artists weren't painting. Rather than paint the fishing fleet leaving and returning to the harbor, Homer painted children, playing about the docks and in the shipyards.

A subject he painted multiple times were scenes of boys waiting for the return of their fathers from fishing.

It was a theme Homer used in some of his paintings during the Civil War, including On Guard (pictured above with the Civil War paintings).

In Gloucester, fishermen would remain out of port for weeks, and some were lost at sea. A father's return would have been a big deal in the life of a Gloucester boy.

In his own time, when Homer first exhibited his paintings of Reconstruction, they were praised by critics. He was admired for the serious sensitivity he brought for the condition of America's freed slaves. But, in the South, any criticism from the north was deeply resente, including Homer's artistic sympathetic sensitivity. In the North, some art critics found Homer's treatment of the subject of Reconstruction refreshingly different from other artists who dared to address the subject.

Looking back from a 21st century perspective, his reconstruction paintings have a dignity about them, a welcoming quality towards these newly minted citizens. Homer had heard the debates of the evils of slavery his entire life. His mother had been a member of an abolitionist church in Boston. Homer had a front row seat to witness and experience the cost of freeing the slaves, the long hard carnage. Now that the fighting was over, his paintings show a warmth, a compassion for these new Americans.

Personally, I really love Taking Sunflower to Teacher -- what heart! I believe Homer believed that this boy's newfound freedom was about to take root.

The sunflower and a monarch butterfly metaphorically tell this boy's current state as a newly freed slave, but they also hint at his future. The butterfly exhibits fragility, but immense beauty and strength. The sunflower has undeniable dazzling beauty, yet as it tenaciously and quickly grew, it followed the light and burst forth with beauty.

Somehow, when looking at this boy, we see him dressed in rags, but he won't stay that way for long. His current state will pass, his beauty and strength will emerge, and his stature will quickly grow in the light of freedom.

Between 1884 until 1905, Winslow Homer often wintered in the Caribbean. He was drawn by the warm weather, the fishing and the subject matter for painting. Over this 21 year period, Homer explored Florida coastal areas including Key West, and he even made it to Cuba and Bermuda.

Homer eagerly met the painting challenges of capturing the crystal clear light, the turquoise waters, and the vividly green plant life. His depictions of the dark skinned native population reveal their personal character and grace. Homer often painted pictures showing the dangers of living with the sea, the human encounters with sharks and the resultant wreckage of being on the water during a hurricane. These paintings still evoke responses in people today nearly 150 years later.

In After the Hurricane, Bahamas Homer tells the visual drama of a fisherman who survived a hurricane. This scene is the aftermath of what must have been a harrowing experience.

The fisherman's wrecked boat has come to rest on the sand next to him. The fisherman is equally ravaged and exhausted. As the fisherman sleeps and begins to revive, in the distance, we see receding black storm clouds and whitecaps as the roiling surf begins to calm down and return to normal.

In a way, this painting recalls similar themes used by Homer during the Reconstruction period. Then too, he told a tale of the aftermath of an unspeakable horror.

After the Civil War, Winslow Homer traveled to France in 1867. His painting Prisoners from the Front (pictured above in the Civil War section of this article) was on exhibit at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Homer did not study in Paris, but did draw scenes of Parisian street life for Harper's. He also did some oil painting. Homer was most impressed with the Barbizon painters, especially Jean-François Millet and his paintings of French peasants, and newer French artists Edouard Manet and Gustave Courbet.

In 1881, Homer traveled to England, spending a brief time in London before heading up the coast nearly to Scotland, setting up an extended 18 month long residency in Cullercoats, a seaside fishing village.

In Cullercoats, Homer was really interested in the disappearing life of the fisherfolk. Many of his paintings featured "fisherwives." He depicts them as hardworking somber and unfancy, going about their daily tasks, and enduring the risks their husbands faced as they went to sea.

During his year and half in Cullercoats, Homer called the Room 17 of the Hudleston Arms his home. He established and maintained his studio across the street, with unobstructed views of the waterfront and the sea.

Critics immediately recognized Homer's The Life Line as a brilliant work, perhaps Homer's greatest painting. Surrounded by raging waves approaching the rocky shore, the rescuer holds tightly to a woman, seemingly unconscious, as the ropes, tackle and pulley edge them closer to safety. The hero's face is hidden by the woman's blowing red scarf.

Homer moved to Prout's Neck soon after his year and a half in Cullercoats, England. He had had enough of city living. One critic described him as "Robinson Crusoe, cloistered on his art island, a hermit with a brush."

Homer's small home was a carriage house on his family's estate, located about 6 miles south of Portland, Maine, and about 90 miles NE of Boston. It was just 75 feet from the shore. Homer hired a Portland architect to create a studio and comfortable living space. He added a second story porch, which homer called "the piazza" to paint in the open air. The summers were lovely, but the winters were bleak and solitary. Homer got through the winters with hard work, and frequent trips to Boston, New York, or the Caribbean.

He painted many scenes of the sea at Prouts Neck, many with sturdy figures of men and women who faced the hardships of living with the sea. Although Homer received high praise for his seascapes, his work did not receive the high prices and fame of John Singer Sargent's more flattering portraits. But painting nature and people's struggle to live with nature was what he wanted to capture.

Besides the places and events covered above, the artist painted in Upstate New York at various times of his life. With Winslow Homer, it was most always about nature and the adventure of meeting it head on. As a young artist of 22, he created a graphite, brush and watercolor drawing of two boys setting a squirrel trap in the woods of upstate, New York.

In Artists Sketching in the White Mountains, Homer shows three painters painting outdoors under a gray sky. Homer was then 32 years old and vacationing in the White Mountains.

In 1869, Homer was on assignment for Harper's Weekly to write about the White Mountains, a region becoming dominated by tourists, with new railroads, new hotels and well groomed paths. Here stylishly dressed ladies ride on horseback.

Apple Pickers was painted on Houghton's Farm, near Mountainville, NY. The farm was owned by Homer's most important patron, Lawson Valentine. Homer created fifty watercolors and several drawings and studies at the farm.

Beginning in 1870, Winslow Homer made many trips to New York's Adirondack Mountains. The mountains, the old forest, the lakes, rivers and ponds provided what Homer cherished most, privacy, abundant subjects to paint, and excellent fishing.

In 1892, Homer did a number of watercolor portraits of his guide Rufus Wallace, who's ruggend appearance matched his surroundings.

One of the most memorable aspects of Homer's Adirondack whitewater paintings was his ability to render a liveliness to the water. These are exciting paintings to see, as visually stimulating. as if you could hear the rushing waters splash and shower you as you balance your way along in a canoe. And for anyone who has ever caught a large mouth bass with a top water lure or fly, it is a thrill. Homer enjoyed fishing, from the sharks of the Caribbean to the bass in the Adirondacks. This jumping bass reveals a glimpse into Homer's own sense of joy being out in the wild.

JENNER - WAVES OF COMPASSION, SONOMA COAST ART & WINE: This first September event, benefiting our local Coast charity Waves of Compassion, will include wine tasting to raise funds for the charity, plus exhibit and sale by several artists in different media, with a portion of proceeds to the charity. BBHG's Linda Sorensen will be featured by Sonoma Coast Art at Jenner Inn on Highway One in Jenner on our beautiful Coast, the upcoming weekend of September 10 and 11, from 10:00a.m. to 4:00p.m. Participating in-person artists are photographer Fracesca Scalpi, painters Linda Sorensen, Deb Titus and Georgia Bourdens, and jeweller Christine Paschal; five other artists' fused glass, jewelry, and ceramics will also be displayed.

SONOMA COUNTY-WIDE - ART TRAILS: The second September event-set begins with preview exhibits that are already or will soon be underway. The open studios of Sonoma County Art Trails, a juried program of Sebastopol Center for the Arts ("SCA"), will be September 24-25 and October 1-2. Hours are 10:00a.m. to 5:00p.m. except that there is a 4:00p.m. early closing on September 25.

We hope you enjoy the event, and that we get to see you at Linda's studio. Linda thanks with great affection the 400 people who visited in early June at her artist studio at Atelier One, Studio #5 (first floor, south end), 2860 Bowen St. in Graton, during Art@theSource 2022. Five artists including Linda are participating in Art Trails at Atelier One (Art Trails #19, #38, #39, #40, #41), and a total of 117 professional artists are participating this year.

The Art Trails preview at Corrick's in Santa Rosa has already begun and will have a closing reception October 7; the preview at SCA in Sebastopol will start September 10 and have its reception September 16; and the preview at Gallery One in Petaluma will start September 8 with its reception September 17.

Collector's Guides are being distributed by mail, and will be available at major distribution points, at SCA, and from participating artists. The online Collector's Guide is available at sonomacountyarttrails.org

Linda and most of the participating artists are available by appointment year-round, which is a reason to hold onto your copy for a while, to access contact information. COLLECTOR'S GUIDES remain online for the whole year until the next catalog takes its place, on the website for the event.

Like Winslow Homer, Charles S. Graham was a free lance illustrator whose drawings were reproduced in "Harper's Weekly" and other major publications of the late 19th century.

Charles S. Graham was 16 years younger than Winslow Homer and died just a year after Homer. His work appeared in nearly every issue of Harper's from 1880 through 1892.

As a young artist, Graham was equally at home with pen and ink, oil or watercolor. An adventurer, he headed west. To pay his way, he did drawings for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Back east, he painted theatrical scenery in New York and Chicago. In 1883, the young 31 old artist often was in residence in San Francisco and was a member of the Bohemian Club and the San Francisco Art Association.

In San Francisco, he is known for the many pen and ink prints he created of the city before the 1906 quake. In 1883, he was present for the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1887, he did a scene of Yellowstone published in Harper's Weekly. Charles was an adventurer. Unlike Albert Bierstadt who produced glorified often unrealistic views of nature, Graham prefered to render what was before him.

NEW EDWARD HOPPER EXHIBITION
Edward Hopper’s New York
Oct 19, 2022 - March 5, 2023
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Last month, we looked back at a phonemenal Edward Hopper exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Now, a new major Edward Hopper exhibition is to be held in New York. Hopper lived in New York for almost 60 years. This exhibition at the Whitney Museum looks at Hopper's paintings of New York. And yes, Night Hawks will be there!

Link to the Whitney's Hopper Exhibition page

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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