The Watercolors of Winslow Homer [Hardcover]

Winslow Homer (Author), Miles Unger (Author), Arnold Skolnick (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2001

Winslow Homer's watercolors rank among the greatest pictorial legacies of this country.

Winslow Homer's primary medium was oil painting, although to make ends meet, he did commercial illustration and chronicled the New York City social scene. Eventually, Homer withdrew from city life altogether to settle at Prout's Neck in New England. There he turned to watercolor, in part for financial reasons (they were easier to sell), but also because the newly popular medium enabled him to capture his impressions of scenery and landscapes encountered during his many travels with an immediacy and directness impossible in the more time-consuming oils.

The Watercolors of Winslow Homer offers a lively and beautifully illustrated survey of the artist's work in a medium he pursued with originality and consummate skill. Of his more than 700 watercolors, over 140 are reproduced here, dating from the 1870s to the turn of the century. Divided into ten thematic chapters chronicling Homer's life and artistic progress, the book begins with the delightful paintings he made of children in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and ends with works bathed in the humid atmosphere of the tropics. Along the way readers will discover Homer's unparalleled range of expression, from the somber works he painted along the stormy English coast to the poetic evocations of the Adirondacks forest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though certainly more famous for his oil paintings, Winslow Homer was one of the first major artists to take watercolor seriously and to herald its acceptance in the 20th century as an art form in its own right, undertaken by stars like O'Keeffe, Prendergast and Hopper. Nearly 700 of his watercolors survive; 150-some are reproduced in The Watercolors of Winslow Homer by Miles Unger, a contributing New York Times critic. It's clear why these paintings, which seem like top-drawer book or magazine illustrations, hover in relative obscurity: the thin quality of the paint doesn't enrich Homer's rural and sea-faring subjects as does the texture he wrought from oil and canvas. But serious fans of turn-of-the-century American art will be delighted with this high-quality collection and Unger's learned text.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Winslow Homer is without a doubt one of America's best-known artists and a popular subject for study. The freshness, vitality, and magnitude of Homer's watercolor paintings set them apart from his other celebrated works in graphic art and oil painting, and Unger, former editor of Art New England and a contributor to the New York Times, reemphasizes the history and significance of these paintings. Unger's writing is both lively and informed. But any assessment of Homer's watercolors owes a great debt to the scholarship of Lloyd Goodrich (Winslow Homer, Whitney Museum of Art, 1944) and Helen Cooper (Winslow Homer Watercolors, National Gallery of Art, 1986), and this work is no exception. The real strength of this book lies in the illustrations. Unger includes 140 of the nearly 700 Homer watercolors, including many lesser-known works representing the Gloucester coast, Prout's Neck, the Adirondacks, and the Bahamas. While Cooper's remains the definitive survey of Homer's watercolors, Unger has added an intelligent examination that beautifully illuminates some of the more obscure of the artist's works. Recommended especially for public libraries. Kraig Binkowski, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (October 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393020479
• ISBN-13: 978-0393020472
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #76 in Books > Arts & Photography > Painting > Watercolor

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful pictures, overwritten text, March 12, 2002

By 

M. A Michaud "michael_michaud" (Dulles, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Watercolors of Winslow Homer (Hardcover)

To: Amazon.com

The hundreds of paintings reproduced in this large-format book deserve five stars. The publisher should be thanked for bringing together works scattered around a large number of museums, and for giving us a finely produced art book. Even fans of Winslow Homer will not have seen most of these paintings, which may represent the summit of American watercolors. Unfortunately, the accompanying text goes far beyond what is necessary to appreciate Homer's art. The descriptions of personal history and technique are helpful, but not the philosophical musings and overwrought interpretations. The text should have been cut by a third.

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Reproductions of Homer's WC, February 24, 2004

By 

Eric Holmes (Vancouver, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Watercolors of Winslow Homer (Hardcover)

My first impression of this book was WOW!!! The size of the reproductions is astounding. Many extend over both large pages of the text. The binding is such that the book lies flat on the table and so the seam in the middle is negligble. THe colour of the reproductions is rich, detailed, and rings true (altho I have not seen any of Homer's work in real-life). Compared side-by-side with Cooper's book, Cooper's reproductions are much smaller and the colour appears weaker and washed out.

As for the text of the book, it is interesting, informative, and insightful. Altogether, this is a very well put together book; it is one of the finest books I have in my collection.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Watercolors of Winslow Homer, September 21, 2007

By 

Nancy Umphres "eesh50" (Zapata, TX.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Watercolors of Winslow Homer (Hardcover)

As a very young child I would spent many hours looking through my grandmother's art library.Winslow Homer and the French impressionists were my favorites and that early experience is probably one of many reasons I became an artist. I bought this book as a gift for my sister who is also an artist. I was able to read most of it before I gave it to her but intend to get a copy for myself. I especially liked the way the book follows Mr. Homer's growth as an artist. It's well written and the collection of his work is incredible. There are so many paintings I have never seen and some I have only seen in black and white.