After the Hurricane, Bahamas, detail

Homer altered the position of the shipwrecked man’s proper right arm in After the Hurricane, Bahamas (figure b). Initially, he painted the arm bent at the elbow with the wrist elevated and bent forward. Then he scraped away the paint in the area of the elbow and foreshortened the arm as he repainted it (see figure a). Roughened fibers and brown and black pigments remain in the scraped area. To camouflage the change, the artist added strands of beach grass. This decision may have …