104
TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)104 Book5
104 CHAPTER 30 Industry, Empire, and the Realist Stylelandscape artist, and photographer, Tanner brought to his
work a concern for simple, everyday events as practiced by
working-class people.InThe Banjo Lesson, he depicts an
intimate domestic scene in which a young boy receives
musical instruction from his grandfather (Figure 30. 23 ).A
fine technician and a fluent
colorist, Tanner showed regu-
larlyin Paris. In 1909, he was
elected to the National
Academy of Design, New York.
American Realists were
keenly aware of the new art of
photography; some, like Tanner
and Eakins, were themselves
fine photographers. But they
were also indebted to the world
of journalism, which assumed
increasing importance in trans-
mitting literate culture.
Winslow Homer (1836–1910)
began his career as a newspaper
illustrator and a reporter for the
New York magazine Harper’s
Weekly. The first professional
artist to serve as a war
correspondent, he producedon-the-scene documentary paintings and drawings of the
American Civil War, which Harper’sconverted to wood-
engraved illustrations (Figure 30. 24 ). Although Homer
often generalized the facts of the events he actually wit-
nessed, he neither moralized nor allegorized his subjects (as
did, for instance, Goya or Delacroix). His talent for graph-
ic selectivity and dramatic concentration rivaled that of
America’s first war photographer, Mathew Brady (see
Figure 30.9).
Apart from two trips to Europe, Homer spent most of
his life in New England, where he painted subjects that
were both ordinary and typically American. Scenes of
hunting and fishing reveal his deep affection for nature,
while his many genre paintings reflect a fascination with
the activities of American women and children.
Homer was interested in the role of African-Americans
in contemporary culture, but critical of visual representa-
tions that portrayed America’s slaves as merry and content.
One of his most provocative paintings, The Gulf Stream,
shows a black man adrift in a rudderless boat surrounded by
shark-filled waters that are whipped by the winds of an
impending tornado (Figure 30. 25 ). While realistic in exe-
cution, the painting may be interpreted as a metaphor for
the isolation and plight of black Americans in the decades
following the Civil War. Homer shared with earlier nine-
teenth-century figures, including Turner, Melville, and
Géricault, an almost obsessive interest in the individual’s
life and death struggle with the sea. However, compared
(for instance) with Géricault’s theatrical rendering of man
against nature in The Raft of the “Medusa”(see Figure
29 .4), which he probably saw in Paris, Homer’s painting is
a matter-of-fact study of human resignation in the face of
deadly peril. As with many publicly displayed nineteenth-
century paintings, it provoked immediate critical response.Figure 30.24 WINSLOW HOMER, The War for the Union: A Bayonet Charge,
published in Harper’s Weekly, July 12, 1862. Wood engraving, 13^5 ⁄ 8 205 ⁄ 8 in.Figure 30.23 HENRY OSSAWA TANNER, The Banjo Lesson,
ca. 1893. Oil on canvas, 49 351 ⁄ 2 in.BK5_001-141.indd 104BK5_001-141.indd 104 04/12/2009 8:57 AM04/12/2009 8:57 AM