Homer's Oddity

We've all had that sort of conversation about a book; one person praises the fantastic use of language, the brilliant descriptions, the thought-provoking dialogue -- and the other reader says they only made it to page 35: "I just couldn't get into it." 

Well, that's a bit like the feeling we had with Winslow Homer: Force of Nature at the National Gallery in London; we just couldn't get into it, somehow (though we did make it all the way to the end, and it gave us plenty to talk about during and afterwards). 

Homer (1836-1910) is one of the great names in American art, famed in the States for his realistic depictions of Civil War fighting, the reconstruction of the South, nature and above all storm-lashed coastlines and mariners in distress. A lot of drama. There is, however, not a single work by him in a British public collection. So it's a great chance to discover an unfamiliar artist, the sort of show we normally love.

Sometimes, as with Glyn Philpot recently at the Pallant in Chichester or, perhaps more pertinently, Harold Sohlberg (creator of Norway's favourite painting) at Dulwich a few years ago, you come away with your horizons expanded, your head full of memorable images. Oddly and unusually, with Homer we couldn't really imagine wanting to take one of those paintings home to hang on our walls. The images left us rather cold and we found it all a bit flat.

What is it about Homer, then? We've been trying to analyse it over several days and haven't really come up with an answer. The subject matter? Fundamentally, we never felt drawn in to his pictures, participants in the action. We were outsiders. That can't be the whole of it, though, can it? You're always an outsider looking in on an Edward Hopper painting -- but you're pulled in to the narrative anyway. 

But enough of this; we'd better show you some of the paintings and then you can make up your own mind.

Homer made his name with reportage as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly from the front line of the Civil War in the first half of the 1860s. The very first painting you get to see, his first significant work in oil, is Sharpshooter, portraying a sniper from the Union forces sitting in a tree and taking aim with the aid of a telescopic sight at a Confederate target some way away. It's a stark, striking image; you can't see the target, but you know what's going to happen next.

When the war ended in 1865, America grieved for more than half a million dead, but there was also hope of a brighter future. The Veteran in a New Field embodies both emotions; the farmer harvesting his crop has laid aside his army tunic, seen in the bottom right, though the scythe evokes the Grim Reaper.  

The North's victory ended slavery in the South, but for many ex-slaves life did not get much better as they continued to work on cotton plantations for subsistence wages. Homer travelled across Virginia recording the lives of the black population in the post-war period; the monumental painting below was bought by an English cotton merchant in 1877 and went on show a year later at the Royal Academy, Homer's first work to be exhibited in the UK.

These are quite weighty pictures; we do get to see some lighter paintings -- children playing, seaside scenes -- but they exhale a slightly curious, charmless air. We just couldn't feel any empathy with the two women taking a Promenade on the Beach (they didn't seem interested in us in any case) or with the three young bathers who've just emerged from the sea in Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide). 

What Homer really loved to paint was the natural world around him, red in tooth and claw, with the perils of the sea a particular favourite. The informative video takes you to his home and studio overlooking the ocean on the Prouts Neck peninsula in Maine.   

Stormy, stormy seas: The walls of this exhibition are full of them, including pictures of daring rescues from stricken ships. Homer turned to this theme during a stay in Cullercoats on England's north-east coast in the early 1880s.

There's certainly a sense of reportage here. It's a dramatic front-page newspaper picture, essentially. But it's weirdly cropped; you don't get the full story of how they'll reach safety -- assuming they do -- and to a certain extent the characters come across as being suspended in mid-air. There's no doubting Homer's technical skill; you can make out the white drops of water on the taut upper rope, but no contact is made with us, the viewers. The woman appears unconscious and the rescuer's face is hidden. 

Homer's most famous work is The Gulf Stream, in which a black sailor on a boat that has lost its mast is tossed on shark-infested waters. Adding to the danger in the background is what appears to be a waterspout, but you can just make out the sailing ship on the horizon. Will it save the sailor? 

Homer found Maine rather cold and inhospitable in winter, so he travelled often to Bermuda and the Caribbean. He responded by producing brighter watercolours, often still depicting storm-lashed palm trees, but frequently verdant and colourful plant life as well. We weren't the only visitors who found this section a welcome relief from the darkness of a lot of Homer's work.

One of the most striking of the watercolours is this one: The Bather, painted during a trip to the Bahamas.  

We're told on the wall panels that The Gulf Stream has become an iconic black image, yet representations such as The Bather of younger black men tend to fetishise black bodies. There's a bit of mixed messaging here, and we have to say we found a bit of overinterpretation in the way the curators sought to represent Homer's views.... when he was very reticent about interpreting his paintings to those who asked about them.

The final room is filled with seascapes painted during his late years in Maine that frequently have no people at all in them. Crashing waves, bubbling foam, grey skies, threatening rocks. A first version of Northeaster included two figures crouching on the dark outcrop. When he reworked it, Homer eliminated the people and intensified the spray. These unpopulated views of nature were more eye-catching and appealing than much of his work, we thought.

One painting we did miss in this show, but which was present in the larger exhibition mounted earlier this year at the Met in New York, was Fox Hunt from Philadelphia, in which a fox flees desperately across a snowy landscape to escape an ominous flock of starving crows. It's a shame, because it's rather memorable in the way that so many of the pictures on display at the National really weren't. 

Plenty to talk about then, but it has to be said that on the whole, we really weren't that moved by this show. 

Practicalities

Winslow Homer: Force of Nature is on at the National Gallery in London until January 8. It's open daily from 1000 to 1800, with lates on Fridays to 2100; the gallery is closed December 24-26 and January 1. Standard admission is £12 (£14 with a Gift Aid donation), and tickets can be reserved online here. Allow 75 minutes to take in this show, including the video half-way through. The National Gallery is on the north side of Trafalgar Square, just a couple of minutes from Charing Cross or Leicester Square stations on the rail and Underground networks.

Images

Winslow Homer, Sharpshooter, 1863, Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Image courtesy of Meyersphoto.com. © The Trustees of the Portland Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, The Life Line, 1884. © Philadelphia Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899 (reworked by 1906), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, The Bather, 1899, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Winslow Homer, Northeaster, 1895, (reworked by 1901), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art