Forgetting and Remembering the Sea with Winslow Homer

Interesting online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at the meaning of the sea in paintings by Winslow Homer.

Maggie Cao from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, took the picture “The Gulf Stream” from 1899 and used it to explore various social and political issues which Homer may have been alluding to. She referenced writing on the nature of the phenomena of the Gulf Stream and how it bought economic benefits to America, opening up trade from South America, but also conflict with the fishing disputes off Canada with the British. She also noted that it was shown shortly after the Spanish-American War.

She also said the work may reference, the by then illegal, Slave Trade as it shows a black figure fighting the elements with sugar cane on the desk of the boat and sharks circling the boat. It makes the figure heroic but vulnerable.

She introduced me to some beautiful pictures of sponge divers in the Bahamas and I was interest in the idea that most seascapes show the sea from land but many of Homer’s show the sea from the sea.

 

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