WINSLOW HOMER Realism re-
ceived an especially warm reception
in the United States. One of the lead-
ing American Realist painters was
Winslow Homer (1836–1910) of
Boston. Homer experienced at first
hand the most momentous event of
his lifetime—the Civil War. In 1860
he joined the Union campaign as an artist-reporter for Harper’s
Weekly.At the end of the war, he painted Veteran in a New Field (FIG.
30-37). Although it is fairly simple and direct, this painting provides
significant commentary on the effects and aftermath of America’s cat-
astrophic national conflict. The painting depicts a man with his back
to the viewer, harvesting wheat. Homer identified him as a veteran by
the uniform and canteen carelessly thrown on the ground in the lower
right corner, but the man’s current occupation is as a farmer, and he
has cast aside his former role as a soldier. The veteran’s involvement in
meaningful, productive work implies a smooth transition from war to
peace. This postwar transition to work and the fate of disbanded sol-
diers were national concerns. Echoing the sentiments that lay behind
Houdon’s portrayal of George Washington as the new Cincinnatus
(FIG. 29-30), the New York Weekly Tribune commented: “Rome took
her great man from the plow, and made him a dictator—we must now
take our soldiers from the camp and make them farmers.”^10 America’s
ability to effect a smooth transition was seen as evidence of its national
strength. “The peaceful and harmonious disbanding of the armies in
the summer of 1865,” poet Walt Whitman wrote, was one of the
“immortal proofs of democracy, unequall’d in all the history of the
past.”^11 Homer’s painting thus reinforced the perception of the coun-
try’s greatness.
Veteran in a New Field also comments symbolically about death.
By the 1860s, farmers used cradled scythes to harvest wheat. In this
instance, however, Homer rejected realism in favor of symbolism.
He painted a single-bladed scythe, thereby transforming the veteran
into a symbol of Death—the Grim Reaper himself—and the paint-
ing into an elegy to the thousands of soldiers who died in the Civil
War and into a lamentation on the death of recently assassinated
President Abraham Lincoln.
THOMAS EAKINSEven more resolutely a Realist than Homer
was Philadelphia-born Thomas Eakins(1844–1916), who possessed
a dedicated appetite for showing the realities of the human experi-
ence. Eakins studied both painting and medical anatomy in Philadel-
phia before undertaking further study under French artist Jean-Léon
Gérôme (1824–1904). Eakins aimed to paint things as he saw them
rather than as the public might wish them portrayed. This attitude
was very much in tune with 19th-century American taste, combining
an admiration for accurate depiction with a hunger for truth.
The too-brutal Realism of Eakins’s early masterpiece,Gross
Clinic (FIG. 30-38), prompted the art jury to reject it for the
Philadelphia exhibition that celebrated the American independence
centennial in 1876. The work presents the renowned surgeon Dr.
Samuel Gross in the operating amphitheater of the Jefferson Medical30-37Winslow Homer,Veteran
in a New Field,1865. Oil on canvas,
2 ^1 – 8 3 21 – 8 . Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York (bequest of Miss
Adelaide Milton de Groot, 1967).
This veteran’s productive work implies
a smooth transition to peace after the
Civil War, but Homer placed a single-
bladed scythe in his hands, a symbol
of the deaths of soldiers and of
Abraham Lincoln.
30-38Thomas Eakins,The Gross Clinic,1875. Oil on canvas,
8 6 6 . Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.
The too-brutal realism of Eakins’s unsparing depiction of a medical
college operating amphitheater caused rejection of this painting from
the Philadelphia exhibition celebrating America’s centennial.806 Chapter 30 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1800 TO 18701 ft.1 ft.