Author: Laura Fravel Related to his trip to the Bahamas, this watercolor by Winslow Homer is a study for The Gulf Stream, a painting in which a shipwrecked man lies on a battered fishing boat as sharks circle in the water. Focusing on the boat, this watercolor sets the stage for the action of the...

Mrs. Henrietta Maria Benson Homer exhibited Sweet Peas at the Brooklyn Art Association in April 1876, asking the relatively modest sum of $20 for the work.[1] In the same show, her son—Winslow Homer—also exhibited work.  Henrietta had taught her son the basics of drawing and painting, and helped to spark his interest in watercolor.  After...

Winslow Homer’s graphite sketch, Two Girls in a Field, typifies the artist’s pastoral themes in the late 1870s and provides fascinating evidence of his creative process.  The drawing shows two young girls strolling arm in arm through a meadow of tall grasses; one in a straw hat looks downward, the other in a bonnet, looks...

Last month in Cooper Hewitt Short Stories, we explored a world of textiles encapsulated in a generous gift to Cooper Union by J.P. Morgan. In January’s short story, written by Gail Davidson, former Curator and Head of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, the work of three important American artists come together to...

In April 2005, while writing an essay on Winslow Homer and the American Landscape, I drove up with my husband to Prouts Neck, Maine where Homer had his studio on land that was owned by his family.  Homer, along with his father and two brothers, had purchased property on Prouts Neck from 1882 through 1909,...