"Snap the Whip," 1872. Oil
on canvas from the collection of The Butler Institute of
American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
Winslow
Homer and the Critics:
KANSAS CITY, MO. - In the 1870s, Winslow Homer was celebrated by
art critics as the best and most American artist of the decade,
for his art fulfilled the requirement that to be American was to
be independent and original. His unconventionality, however, also
stirred tremendous controversy and brought harsh criticism from
some of the art press. "Winslow Homer and the Critics: ," which
runs through May 6 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, explores
Homer's pivotal role in shaping a national art.
More than 50 of Homer's most famous oil paintings and
watercolors, along with less familiar but equally significant
works from 1868 to 1881, are displayed in the unique context of
the turbulent, symbiotic relationship between this American
master and the nation's early art critics.
The exhibition is organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
and curated by Dr Margaret C. Conrads, Samuel Sosland Curator of
American Art at the Nelson-Atkins. The works have been drawn from
museums and private collections across the country, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National
Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland
Museum of Art, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. After
opening at the Nelson-Atkins, the show will travel to the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art in
Atlanta, Ga., where it will be seen from June 10 through
September 9, and October 6 through January 6, 2002, respectively.
In 1868, Homer, a Boston native, was 32 years old and an
acclaimed, rising artist just returned from a year abroad and
reestablishing himself into the New York art world. By early
1881, at age 45 and about to embark on his second and final
European sojourn, Homer found himself in a class alone - at once
radical and old guard, controversial and status quo. In the
intervening dozen years, which are the focus of this exhibition,
he actively participated in the New York art world, and his work
attracted the most sustained and penetrating commentary in the
art writings of the day. "Winslow Homer and the Critics" draws
attention to this understudied period of Homer's otherwise well
known career and enables us to view Homer as he was seen by his
contemporaries.
"Weary," circa 1878. Watercolor and graphite on paper from the
collection of the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, Ill.
Homer spent the years of the Civil War shuttling between his New
York home and the battlegrounds of Virginia, producing a
well-known series of illustrations of army life for Harper's
Weekly and his first group of paintings, also of war-related
topics. In 1866, he catapulted to fame when "Prisoners from the
Front" (Metropolitan Museum of Art) appeared at the National
Academy of Design. Homer's experience as an artist in the 1870s
was grounded in this initial success.
The high praise it garnered marked Homer as America's young
artist of promise. His designation as the quintessential American
artist and the country's hope for the creation of an identifiable
national art remained constant throughout the decade. As a
result, high, even unrealistic, expectations by art critics
plagued him, and often placed him at the center of controversy as
well as praise.
The New York art community of the 1860s and 1870s was still
relatively small and tight-knit, though blossoming, and during
this time America and American art began a period of significant
transformation. Unprecedented industrialization, severe financial
panics, record immigration, rampant materialization, and class
conflicts were just a few of the challenges in post-Civil War
American society.
The changes in art, while not as momentous as changes in the
country at large, were no less comprehensive. After three decades
of artistic supremacy, the Hudson River School of landscape
painting began to wane, but with no single aesthetic available to
replace it. In 1868, ten daily New York City newspapers included
art articles in their pages.
Over the next 13 years, the amount of attention given to the art
world grew tremendously. Art criticism in magazines experienced
an expansion similar to that of newspapers. Eight general
magazines had an ongoing, if irregular, commitment to the visual
arts between 1868 and 1881. Also during this time, art magazines
developed as a new genre in periodical literature. All these
venues provided fertile ground for art criticism, and in them,
aesthetic battles raged as Homer and American art simultaneously
matured.
In its exhibition design, "Winslow Homer and the Critics"
presents the works, not necessarily in the order in which Homer
completed them, but as they were shown at public spaces including
the National Academy of Design, American Watercolor Society,
clubs like the Century Club, and auctions.
Therefore, museum-goers will witness Homer's paintings in much
the same way that 1870s art-interested New Yorkers would have
come to know his work. This layout and the accompanying text
panels and labels allow visitors to simultaneously view the
paintings and consider the critics' responses, from the emphatic
approval to the stinging rebukes, which erupted in response to
Homer's art. A comparative gallery of works by Homer's peers
highlights the great visual difference between his work and his
colleagues'.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors discover paintings that
were first exhibited in the late 1860s and early 1870s, a time
when subject matter predominated as the determining factor of a
painting's success. The themes Homer explored were drawn from
current events and topics of contemporary concern - the treatment
of women, children, and African-Americans, the status of the
American farm, and the preservation of the wilderness - and
remain relevant topics today.
At the same time that Homer's use of native themes was applauded,
he was sometimes condemned for his fascination with what some
considered trivial subject matter and for bordering on the
inappropriate. When he showed "Eagle Head, Manchester,
Massachusetts," a painting of three young women at the beach, at
the 1870 National Academy exhibition, it was labeled unique,
defiant, "not quite refined," and "of questionable taste," on
account of both the subject and the implied voyeurism in its
presentation.
Though consistently nationalistic and contemporary in his themes,
Homer presented his subject matter in styles that fluctuated
between or combined experimental and standard artistic treatment.
At a time when most critics considered American art to be
languishing, Homer's work was appreciated in part for its daring
approach. His artistic practices, however, particularly the lack
of conventional perspective in combination with a loose painting
style, frequently came under attack.
His lack of finish was criticized in commentary about "Cernay la
Ville - French Farm," "Rocky Coast and Gulls," "White Mountain
Wagon," and others. With "The Country School," a painting
depicting a class in session in a rural, one-room schoolhouse,
Homer learned how subject and style might be finessed.
After criticism that his subjects were "trifling" and "vapid,"
Homer responded with one in "The Country School" that critics
embraced as "thoroughly national." From this point on, he
recognized that using an especially national subject could gain
him considerable stylistic freedom, or conversely, that using a
more traditional technique could gain him latitude with his
subject matter. Slowly, too, the critics came to be more
accepting of his vigorous painting style.
In 1873, Homer turned to watercolor, a medium for which he had a
special affinity. Even though his watercolors would at times
provoke the same extremes of critical reactions as his oils, in
turn, these works forced the critics to come to terms with the
medium and eventually accept it as valid in its own right. The
exhibition contains 26 watercolors, some of which are "How Many
Eggs?" "Backgammon," and "Sunset Fires."
As the New York art world of the mid-1870s entered a period of
rapid change, Homer's work underwent its own transformation. The
exhibition of works such as "Milking Time" in 1875 marked the
expansion of his reliance on pictorial design and artistic
treatment, especially the use of light and color. The following
year, the appearance of "Breezing Up" (boys and a young man
sailing) and "Unruly Calf" (an African-American boy pulling a
calf with a rope leash) reinforced Homer's contradictory position
as the leading artist who fulfilled the requirements for a
national art at the same time that he continued to challenge his
viewers. Even as he remained rooted in tradition, in nearly every
work he would, in some way, break with orthodox art practices. If
the subject of "Breezing Up" celebrated the joys and vitality of
American life, that of "Unruly Calf" was deemed, by many critics,
as undeserving subject matter.
"Gloucester Harbor," 1873. Oil on canvas from the collection of
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
After the Centennial celebrations of 1876, Homer's art was most
ostensibly engaged with the variety of new trends made popular by
the influx of European paintings and American artists trained in
Munich or Paris. In the last years of the decade, his images of
fashionable women ("Woman and Elephant") and young shepherds and
shepherdesses ("Girl with Hay Rake," "Girl and Sheep") and his
appropriation of decorative and Japanese aesthetics ("The Cotton
Pickers") especially played into the contemporary cosmopolitan.
Yet, once the European-trained artists appeared on the New York
art scene, Homer's place as the most radical, unconventional, and
sketchy painter was eclipsed. Instead, because Homer's images
were always perceived, first and foremost, as native, they
offered his viewers an avenue for the acceptance of European
influence without compromising their status as Americans. Thus,
as the decade wore on, Homer's watercolors and oils were
simultaneously appreciated for embracing European influence while
remaining thoroughly national. "Answering the Horn" and the
watercolors he exhibited in 1879 ("Fresh Air"), for instance,
demonstrated his ability to nationalize artistic strategies, even
when they were clearly derived from European sources.
By the close of the 1870s, Homer had achieved a prominence
reserved for few artists. Throughout the decade, his art was
called original, individual, free, honest, truthful, strong,
vigorous, pure, natural, unconventional, masculine, crude, and
uncouth. While the critics heralded Homer for his independent
Americanism, they most often criticized him when he seemed to
push independence and originality beyond acceptable limits.
Homer's originality was repeatedly his downfall as well as his
salvation. At once America's art hero and renegade, Homer in the
1870s played an essential role as a painter who, with the
critics, transformed the concept of a national art.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is at 4525 Oak Street. Hours
are Tuesday to Thursday, 10 am to 4 pm; Friday, 10 am to 3 pm;
Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; and Sunday, noon to 5 pm. Telephone,
816/561-4000.
