Artists Sketching in the White Mountains. Winslow Homer.
Reviewed by Steve Jermanok
By most accounts, Winslow Homer had a sardonic sense of humor. In his studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, where he created his best known works, hangs a sign in bold black letters that reads: "SNAKES! SNAKES! MICE!" The artist wrote this to discourage "the damned old women," his reference to the summer visitor, from disturbing him while working on the rocky shoreline. Sketchbook in hand, he would wait patiently for nature to provide the tense drama. Wait for the merciless Maine climate, replete with dense fog and forceful gales to roll in, thrusting the waves against the shoreline of rock. Wait for the weather to take a turn for the worse and trap an unfortunate fisherman in his small dinghy on the rocky outcroppings as the angry waves bathe him in salt.
Rarely do we see a lighter side of Homer. So it comes as a delightful surprise to view the oil, Artists Sketching in the White Mountains (1868), where we find a self-portrait of a younger Homer, his handlebar mustache extending out from his face, the last in a line of three painters depicting the mountain scenery. The work is rich in whimsy, the romanticized version of the artist working under the umbrella for shade, his bottle of wine atop a nearby stump, with rucksack labeled in black bold letters, "HOMER," strewn on the ground behind him. You can't help but laugh, finding it hard to believe that Homer ever painted in a sports jacket and hat.
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