The Wall Street Journal - 03.09.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 3, 2019 |A

ART REVIEW

Flotsam, Jetsam, Handsome

An intimate look at Winslow Homer’s seaside work made during the early part of his career

Gloucester, Mass.
USUALLY I’M AGAINSTcluttering
up an exhibition with period pho-
tographs and related bric-a-brac—
believing that a show’s concentra-
tion should be on the world
created inside, not outside, works
of art. I appreciate, however, that
context matters: Seeing historical
objects and ephemera alongside
artworks sometimes adds flavor
and helps viewers to connect to an
exhibition’s subject and, by exten-
sion, its works of art.
That’s how I felt while visiting
“Homer at the Beach: A Marine
Painter’s Journey, 1869-1880,” an
intimate exhibition at the Cape Ann
Museum. The show is handsome,
historically rich and perfectly posi-
tioned here at this harbor venue,
which devotes galleries to regional
maritime and fishing artifacts, local
decorative arts, Gloucester sea cap-
tain Elias Davis’s house and the
works of the renowned illustrator
and marine painter Fitz Henry Lane
(1804-1865), a Gloucester native
with whom Boston-born Winslow
Homer (1836-1910) had much in
common.
An illustrator and painter,
Homer is chiefly celebrated for his
mature paintings of life on or near
the sea. “Homer on the Beach” was
never intended to be a gathering of
Homer’s greatest maritime works.
Therefore, it does not contain
those revered later masterpieces
such as “The Life Line” (1884),
“The Herring Net” (1885) and “The
Gale” (1883-93), but it lays their
foundations and illumines the first
leg of his voyage. Curated by Wil-
liam R. Cross, a museum consul-
tant and chairman of the Advisory
Board of the Yale Center for Faith
and Culture, the show focuses on
Homer’s artistic formation as a
marine painter. But it extends into
local culture and history, position-
ing Homer as a cherished member
of the Cape Ann family.
“Homer on the Beach” includes
51 pictures by the artist, primarily
seascapes painted at six waterfront
locations from New Jersey—where,
in 1869, he painted his first marine
scene—to Maine, but especially dur-
ing his repeated visits to Gloucester
and other places on Cape Ann,
where, in 1873, he executed his first
watercolors, some of which are on
view. The show is augmented with
nearly as many contextualizing im-
ages and things: illustrations cre-
ated after Homer’s paintings, period
photographs and objects, such as
straw hats, a woman’s dress and
bathing costume, a wooden model
of a schooner and an 1881 Glouces-
ter hotel dinner menu.
This exhibition’s pictures by
Homer were made after he re-
turned, in 1867, from a nearly
year-long sojourn in France, where
he was deeply influenced by the
Barbizon School and Japanese
prints, which had flooded Europe
beginning in the mid-19th century.
These encounters began to shift
Homer from being a mere illustra-
tor, who pieced together things
and narratives, to a painter who
interpreted the world through
form, light, movement and feeling.
Homer struggled, off and on, in

BYLANCEESPLUND

LIFE & ARTS

his marine oils to integrate figures

and settings fluidly. In “The Sand

Dune” (1871), beach, grasses and

sky feel natural, but his people ap-

pear to be pasted on. In “Three

Boys in a Dory” (1873), the rocking

watery reflections of the boys are

more lovely and convincing than

the figures themselves. But in the

plein-air oil paintings “Study for

Eagle Head, Manchester, Massa-

chusetts” (c. 1869) and “Lobster

Cove, Manchester, Massachusetts”

(1869), greenish-gray water and

sky convey weight, pressure and

light. Homer evokes John Consta-

ble and Gustave Courbet. He por-

trays something of the power and

majesty of the sea—and of its

emotional impact on the artist.

Among the illuminating juxtapo-

sitions here is Homer’s oil painting

“Rocky Coast and Gulls” (1869)

with Utagawa Hiroshige’s wood-

block print “Awa Province: Naruto

Whirlpools” (1855). Hiroshige’s

white cresting wave and its bub-

bles hang, ornamentally so—as if

the ephemeral had been frozen

there and made beautiful and tan-

gible—much like the white spray-

ing surf in Homer’s painting. It was

here that I understood Homer’s de-

votion to particularities—his desire

to state, and to grasp, the exact

thingness of objects in his pictures.

I saw for the first time the root of

Homer’s lifelong conflict: his com-

peting impulses toward classicism,

decoration, romanticism and natu-

ralism—played out most notably

here in a suite of narratives he

painted on ceramic tiles.

Other highlights include

Homer’s more freely executed wa-

tercolors of sailboats, ocean, land

and sky, “Sunset Fires” and

“Gloucester Sunset” (both 1880),

in which streaks of black, blue, red

and white set the scene ablaze, as

if in an explosive flash; and “The

Tent (Summer by the Sea)”

(1874)—a gorgeous, recently attri-

The show is augmented

with historical objects

and ephemera that lend

useful context to the art

buted oil painting of a family

shading itself that is as weighty,

light-filled and structurally solid

as any picture here.

Nearby is Homer’s wonderful oil

painting “Winding Line” (1875), in

which a contemplative fisherman,

winding line, sits on the edge of his

boat, moored on the pebbly beach.

Seeing a period photograph of the

actual fisherman Homer depicted

and a genuine example of that 14-

foot-long peapod boat—both dis-

played here—doesn’t necessarily

help us to appreciate “Winding

Line.” But these objects do add con-

text and spice to a show that is as

much a portrait of a particular

place and time as of a particular

artist—a painter who had found his

subject, but not yet his sea legs.

Here in Gloucester, “Homer at the

Beach” is right at home.

Homer at the Beach: A Marine

Painter’s Journey, 1869-

Cape Ann Museum, through Dec. 1

Mr. Esplund is the author of “The

Art of Looking: How to Read

Modern and Contemporary Art”

(Basic Books).

Winslow Homer’s ‘Winding Line’ (1875), above; ‘Rocky Coast and Gulls

(Manchester Coast)’ (1869), top; and ‘John Murray Brown’ (1869), below

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON; MINNESOTA MARINE ART MUSEUM; COLLECTION OF JAMES AND DEBBIE BURROWS; OLD YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION; THE WESTMORELAND MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Winslow Homer’s ‘Sunset Fires’ (1880), above; Emma Lewis Coleman’s ‘George

Henry Donnell, Fisherman’ (1880s), right