Customer Reviews

Winslow Homer: Poet of the Sea

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Poet of the Sea is published in conjunction with exhibitions held in 2006 at London's Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Musee d'Art Americain in Giverny. Following the introduction to the exhibition, the first essay "Winslow Homer: Poet of the Sea", provides a brief background to the artist, and then traces his progress through his travels and the related paintings. "Homer's Wine Dark Seas", the next essay, discusses his watercolours and provides an objective and informative appraisal of the artist's work, including mention of some of his techniques; it also mentions contemporary attitudes and criticism regarding his work. The third essay "Mixing Oil and Water: the Development of Winslow Homer's Painting", traces Homer's development as an artist from his early days, and considers his influences and methods of working. The three essays are well illustrated in colour, with the illustrations appearing alongside the relevant text; and each supplies copious notes. The book concludes with a checklist of the exhibition, a chronology and a bibliography.

The catalogue of paintings commences on page 54 and is separated into four sections, each with a brief illustrated introduction to be followed by many pages of full colour plates. The quality of the reproduction is excellent, my only criticism: often the image is small relative to the page size, even those pictures which cross the gutter occupy less than a page and half width, and some very wide landscape format images are little more than a three inch wide strip across a single page, occupying considerably less than a quarter of the total page area. (An unfortunate trend in publishing today!)

A large format paperback with fold out covers, 152 pages, about 60 full colour plates including oils, watercolours and a few drawings; and illustrating the text an additional thirty or thereabouts full colour reproductions of which some are nearly half page size, plus one or two black and white photographs. This is an impressive and valuable publication.

If you already own every single book published on Winslow Homer , you will still want to add this to your collection. Excellent quality of reproductions and plenty of them ,printed on top quality paper plus the usual pompous text is actually readable this time. An added bonus is that the price is so affordable. Definately a BEST buy.