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Description: Winslow Homer and the Camera: Photography and the Art of Painting
~In 2013, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art was given an English-made camera that once belonged to Winslow Homer. Acquired by the artist in 1882, during the two years he lived in Cullercoats, England, this object joined a large collection of Homer’s art and archival materials at the Museum, including more than a hundred photographs either taken or collected...
PublisherBowdoin College Museum of Art
PublisherYale University Press
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Preface
In 2013, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art was given an English-made camera that once belonged to Winslow Homer. Acquired by the artist in 1882, during the two years he lived in Cullercoats, England, this object joined a large collection of Homer’s art and archival materials at the Museum, including more than a hundred photographs either taken or collected by him. We appreciate greatly the generosity of Neal Paulsen, a resident of Scarborough, Maine, for presenting this camera to the Museum in memory of James Ott and in honor of David James Ott ’74. This gift—together with the rich resources of the Winslow Homer Collection—inspired this project.
Dana E. Byrd, assistant professor of art history at Bowdoin, and I have collaborated on the research for this volume since the start. At first, we were not certain what to say about the camera, nor did we fully grasp the authorship or significance of the different photographs in the Winslow Homer Collection. In reviewing the scholarly literature, we found that several historians—especially Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Helen Cooper, Patricia Junker, Frank Kelly, David Tatham, and John Wilmerding—had noted the presence of photography in his practice, but that none had devoted prolonged consideration to its importance. We are grateful for their work in setting the stage for this study. Also, we must acknowledge Philip C. Beam, a Bowdoin art historian, the former director of the Museum, and the individual primarily responsible for working with Homer’s family to secure the personal archive in which these photographs resided. He used many of these images in Winslow Homer at Prout’s Neck (1966), but spoke only in passing about Homer’s interest in photography. We are indebted to Beam for preserving this archive and for amassing during his tenure such a rich collection of graphic works by the artist.
Over the recent past, Dana and I have sought to understand better this group of photographs and the role that photography played in Homer’s artistic practice. As he did not acquire his first camera until the early 1880s—when he was in his mid-forties—we were curious about the medium’s influence on his art prior to that time. What was his relationship to the photographers who—like him—figured scenes and persons associated with the Civil War, or to those photographers who—also like him—traveled to picture resort communities or wilderness destinations during the era of Reconstruction? We wanted to know whether Homer acquired a camera solely to record personal memories and travels, or whether, as an artist devoted to a faithful portrayal of the larger world, he saw this new visual technology as a tool that might aid his painting, drawing, and printmaking. Similarly, how did his experience with the camera compare with that of other artists of his era, a period during which the medium became more affordable and easier to use after the introduction of dry plate negatives and the Kodak camera? Given the different photographic portraits of the artist in the Museum’s collection, we were also interested in exploring to what degree he used photography to shape his public identity. These were some of our initial questions regarding this group of photographs.
In many ways, this project is comparable to Eakins and the Photograph (1994), Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold’s study of photography’s importance to Thomas Eakins’s artistic practice. Though the two artists did not work together, they both acquired their first cameras in the early 1880s. Their art was also concerned with many of the same questions, and they both experimented with various mediums throughout their careers. Because of the large number of extant photographs by Eakins, it appears that the Philadelphia artist had a more prolonged and active interest in photography. Yet, while Homer’s photographic output was much smaller, we came to appreciate that his engagement with photography and its influence was no less significant.
During Homer’s two-year sojourn in England, the artist acquired two cameras, both of which are included in this exhibition. As Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., and Frank Kelly argued in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition Winslow Homer (1995), Homer went to England in the spring of 1881 looking to forge a new direction for his art. Returning to the United States in the fall of 1882, he had changed much about his artistic style and his choice of subjects. While photography was not primarily responsible for this transformation, his interest in making his own photographs and in looking at the work of other photographers was part of a broader creative exploration. Settling at Prout’s Neck, Maine, he continued to experiment, often creating compositions of the same subject in different mediums, a characteristic of his practice since his early years as an artist. At times, a work in one medium might serve as a study for a work in another medium. On other occasions, he created a similar composition in two or more different mediums. In part, he was motivated by the commercial potential of a range of work, though this movement between art forms also interested him as one who was long engaged in probing the way things look and the challenge of portraying them realistically. During the last three decades of his life, photography became increasingly a part of this investigation, both at Prout’s Neck and during travels beyond Maine.
The relationship between photography, painting, and other artistic mediums has long interested scholars of American art. With Van Deren Coke’s The Painter and the Photograph (1964) as an important early study of this exchange, scholars have continued to probe photography’s intersection with the wider world of the fine arts. Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph (2011), edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes and Jonathan Weinberg, is an important collection of recent essays that explores this history from its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to today. While essayists mention Homer in this volume, his engagement with photography goes largely unaddressed. Much scholarly work has also focused on the effort to advance photography as a fine art medium, and this literature—especially concerning photographers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—has also shaped our inquiry.
Like most painters of the late nineteenth century, Homer never spoke directly about photography, nor did he ever exhibit such images in any formal manner. Yet, during his lifetime he owned at least three cameras. He also collected photographs by others and posed occasionally for his portrait both outdoors and in photographers’ studios. As one attuned to appearances and constantly experimenting with how to represent them, Homer understood that photography as a new technology of sight had much to reveal. While he privileged his own vision, and saw painting as the most compelling means to figure the world, he grew to learn that photography—despite its limitations and problematic reputation in the world of the fine arts—was a medium that did not undermine, but instead complemented, his larger artistic interests.
In my essay, I look broadly at Homer’s career as a whole, from the artist’s beginnings as an illustrator in Boston through his time in New York City to his final years in Maine. My goal is to think anew about his artistic practice by examining his engagement with photography and the larger image economy during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Dana’s essay takes a different approach, focusing specifically on his travels to the Bahamas, Cuba, and Florida during the 1880s. Yet, she is likewise concerned with the influence of a new visual culture that shaped Homer’s response to these tropical locales. Together, the two essays aim to add a new chapter to an appreciation of Homer and his art, and to complicate his reputation as a painter. In addition to resetting our understanding of Homer’s oeuvre, this publication also aspires to contribute to a broader study of American art by considering his work as an important precursor to the emergence of modernism in the United States. Homer was one of the most celebrated painters of the late nineteenth century, but, as this study hopes to demonstrate, his achievement owes a debt to new modes of vision that the medium of photography helped to create.
Frank H. Goodyear III
Co-Director
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Brunswick, Maine