Winslow Homer: Force of Nature – Curator’s talk

Fascinating and useful online lecture from the National Gallery on their new exhibition on Winslow Homer which opens in two days’ time.

Christopher Riopelle talked us though the life of Homer using paintings which have been chosen for the show. He covered his early work in the American Civil War doing woodcuts from the front for the newspapers and how this then fed into his later career and his continued interest in taking a journalistic approach to subjects.

He then looked at how he came to England in 1881 to visit the seafaring community of Cullercoats on the North East coast recording the work of the rescue crews there and the lives of the fishermen and their wives. He talked about how Homer built a collection of drawings and sketches which he drew on for the rest of his career.

Finally he looked at some of the iconic paintings from Homer’s his later years and how they commented on  American life .

I’m off to see the show tomorrow at a members’ preview and am really looking forward to it. Homer, and in particular his painting “The Gulf Stream”, have appeared in a number of talks I have listened to recently so I am very excited to see the work in the flash and learn more.

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