Winslow Homer: Force of Nature

Evocative exhibition at the National Gallery on the life and work of Winslow Homer.

Homer had come up in so many lectures I’ve done recently I was excited to see this show and it didn’t disappoint. It was beautifully presented with soft blue walls and clear labels and the pictures were nicely placed to give you space to look at them.

I love his sense of reportage from the Civil War works based on his time as a journalist, through the Reconstruction period and on to the politics of the Caribbean at the end of the 19th century. The themes and images felt very current. Some fell a bit between symbolism and sentimentality.

The heart of the show was his time in Cullercoats now in Tyne and Wear sketching the fishermen and their wives and their equivalent of lifeboat men. He worked these sketches up into oil paintings back in America and drew on the sketches for the rest of his career. I was lucky enough to get talking to a couple from the town at the show who were very proud of this part of the town’s history and were now working to raise money to save a tower shown in some of the works.

I loved the last room of rough seascapes devoid of people and the wonderful use of white in them. By chance a featured picture on my phone when I went to take a photo was of a very similar scene at North Point in Barbados.

Closes 8 January 2023


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