Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 66 JULY 2019 I N - D E P T H PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF CAPE ANN MUSEUM Clockwise from top left, Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Five Boys at the Shore, Gloucester, 1880. Watercolor on paper (9 ¾" x 14"). Collection of Jamie Wyeth; Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Children on the Beach (aka Watching the Tide Go Out and Watching the Boats), 1873. Oil on canvas (12 5/8" x 16 ½"). Private collection, photograph courtesy of Sotheby's, Inc. © 2019; Winslow Homer (1836-1910), The Sand Dune, 1872. Oil on canvas (13" x 21 ½"). C. Thomas May, Jr. and Eleanor S. May Family Collection. Step into the Cape Ann Museum this summer for its breathtaking Winslow Homer exhibit. BY ROBERT G. PUSHKAR HOMER AT THE BEACH I N - D E P T H The enchanting power of the ocean and one artist who mined its possibilities shapes the theme of Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter's Journey, 1869-1880 at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester (August 3 to December 1, 2019). Co-curator William Cross explains that he began with a basic question: "How did a relatively little-known American with ambition and talent become the great marine painter that we know today?" To arrive at a concrete answer, Cross and co-curator Henry Adams narrowed their focus to the art Homer created across six locations, including Gloucester, where he summered during two seminal years, 1873 and 1880, and where he found fresh subjects and evolved distinctive approaches to his work. As he once told a contemporary writer on art: "You have the sky overhead giving one light; then the re- flected light from whatever it reflects; then the direct light of the sun; so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several luminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere." The exhibit comprises 51 original Homer works from 40 lenders plus 45 contextual- izing objects to provide viewers with a sense of time and place. There's a variety of media: watercolors, oil paintings, tile paintings, and other kinds of drawings. Homer was judicious in his risks where other artists might have been reluctant to stretch their talents. Ex- perimentation was, it seems, a driving force. Criticized by the art establishment once he entered exhibitions, he soldiered on, adhering to his own evolving aesthetic, developed and expanded from a solid foundation laid during his early years as an illustrator for the widely circulated Harper's Weekly. For Homer the summer of 1873 in Glouces- ter was a period of transition and redirection. He discovered the expressive possibilities of watercolor painting. In addition, he found a favorite subject: childhood, already popular in the national consciousness. Memories of the trauma of the Civil War still were still present in people's minds along with the throes of social upheaval and the harsh effects of indus- trialism. It seemed a natural response to look back at a simpler past. So Homer turned to childhood for inspira- tion. His art from this period often reflects a down-to-earthness—simple people, living simple lives, doing simple things in their own environment. The sea is largely a pleasant backdrop to the subjects' in front of it. One common concept, the "Bad Boy," who came to exemplify a quaint purity. Sure, boys had fun doing what had boys always done, but now in art, poetry, magazines, and novels their ingenu- ousness struck a note of common affection. Most famous in literature were Mark Twain's iconic Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who endure to this day. Boyhood depictions were Homer's painterly nod to lost innocence. In Five Boys at the Shore, the subjects have