“Marine,” by Winslow Homer.
In the Emerson McMillin Collection.
(click image to enlarge)
This is not the case, however, with the very beautiful “Herring Net,” done at about the same time. It is another open-sea piece with fishermen drawing into a boat a net full of wriggling fish caught in the meshes. Herring, as they come out of the water, are brilliant in iridescent hues, and no doubt that in itself appealed to Homer and was the reason for the picture’s existence. The color at once became the illustrative motive—became the picture. There is no feeling now of color as an afterthought or as playing second part to the men or the sea. The eye goes to the glittering herring at once. You comprehend at a glance that this is a color scheme per se, and that the gray men and the gray sea are only a ground upon which the iridescent hues appear. Whether Homer realized how beautiful the color was, whether he had any emotional feeling about it, or saw any fine pictorial poetry in it, who shall say? In life he was disposed to deny such things. He said to John W. Beatty: “When I have selected a thing carefully, I paint it exactly as it appears.” Was that his procedure with the “Herring Net”? Was it merely a color report of what he had seen? If so, he never saw anything so beautiful again. It is his high-water mark as a colorist.
Homer was now producing his best-known pictures of fishermen, sailors, and sea, such as the “Fog Warning” and “Eight Bells.” A literary half-illustrative quality marks them, but perhaps we should not feel this did we not know the painter had served time at that side of art. They can stand as great pictures all by themselves, simply because they are powerful characterizations of the sea. They have a driving truth about them that sweeps away any demurrer on account of their method. And in them all there is indication and suggestion of an expanding pictorial sense. It came late, for Homer was fifty. It was never to become a complete expansion, it was always more of a suggestion than a realization; but it was a welcome addition and showed the painter’s active and receptive mind.
While in Cuba Homer got the material for his “Searchlight, Santiago Harbor,” which he put in picture form about 1899. There is a great dark gun in the foreground—the dramatic catch-point, again—with a suggestion of a mason-work fort around it. A search-light flares up the sky; the sky itself is a gray-blue night effect. The arrangement is large, big in simplicity of masses. The color is the usual gray-blue, but there is a fine note about it, with a light and an air that would count for little in reproduction but are very effective in the picture itself. The canvas comes precious near being a great affair of form, light, and air. It is as sharp in drawing and as flat and dull in its surface painting as his other works. The naïve simplicity of the brush-work is astonishing. Homer knows no tricks of handling, and will resort to no glazes, scumbles, or stipples. He makes his statement so unadorned that it seems almost crude or immature. And yet with these shortcomings we still have an unusual quality of light, a rare night sky, and a suggestion, at least, of fine color.
If the artistic sense seemed to be growing with Homer in his late years, the early illustrative sense was not exactly dead or dying. From first to last he knew how to characterize things—to catch and give the salient features with force. Nothing he ever did shows this better than his “Fox and Crows,” now in the Pennsylvania Academy. A red fox is trailing through soft, deep snow and some crows are hawking and dipping at him, as is their wont. Off in the distance is a glimpse of the sea under a gray sky. It is composition, characterization, and illustration all in one. Nothing could be more original or more truthful. From this picture alone one might think Homer an experienced animal painter, but it happens to be his one and only animal picture. It is practically an arrangement in black-and-white, well massed and effectively placed on the canvas. The blacks of the near crows are repeated in the far crows and in the ears and forepaws of the fox; the white of the snow is repeated in the sea and sky; the gray half-tones are echoed in the fox and rocks and clouds. It is not only an excellent design fully wrought but the effect of the skill is apparent in the convincing truth of fox and snow and winter shore.
Finally came a series of pictures in which bird and beast and man are left out and only the great sea and its fearsome fret on the shore remain. “Cannon Rock,” done about 1895, shows a section of rocky coast with blue-green waves pushing in and curling in white crests. In the “Northeaster” a green-and-white wave is breaking over a rock and the spray and foam are flung high in air. The “Maine Coast” is a wild day along shore with rain and mist and spindrift and flying scud in the air; there is blue-gray sky and sea, and far out the huge waves are lifting and rolling shoreward with irresistible force. On the rocky coast the foaming crests are falling amid split and shattered rock strata. “High Cliff” and the “Great Gale” are variations of the same theme.
“Fox and Crows,” by Winslow Homer.
From a copyrighted photograph of the painting, reproduced
by courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
(click image to enlarge)