Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art. Largely self-taught, Homer began his career working as commercial illustrator.one of America’s most iconic artists—is the relationship between his painting and photography, and the role of the relatively new medium on his approach to image making. After the Civil War, Homer traveled to locations in the eastern United States that were becoming popular as tourist destinations--the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Catskills and Adirondacks of New York, and Cape Ann in Massachusetts. He was introduced to a new type of photography—imagery to promote tourism. These images captured a moment in time and effects like glare, blur and shadow that the eye might not perceive. The strikingly sunlit wagon-wheel spokes Homer painted in The White Mountain Wagon (oil on panel, ca. 1869), for example, suggest that he understood that photographic images could provide fresh, immediate perspectives that he could incorporate into his paintings.