File:Winslow Homer (1914) (14598105598).jpg

Identifier: whomer00coxk (find matches)
Title: Winslow Homer
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Cox, Kenyon
Subjects: Homer, Winslow, 1836-1910
Publisher: Privately Printed
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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um?mary indications, sufficient for his purpose but slight*er and slighter in structure. But if Homer had neither the right kind nor the rightamount of training for the figure draughtsman, he hadthe only right and true training for the draughtsmanof rocks and waves, and no one has ever drawn thembetter. Constant observation had taught him all thatit is needful to know of their forms, and had fully sup?plemented his natural gifts. No one has so felt andexpressed the solid resistance of rock, the vast bulkand hammering weight of water, the rush and move?ment ofwave and wind. It is the suggestion of weightand movement that makes his figure drawing im?pressive in spite of its lapses—it is in the suggestion ofweight and movement that his drawing of land andsea is unmatched and unsurpassable. A sense of weight and of movement is, however,much more a matter of design—of the composition ofline—than of drawing in the usual meaning of thatword. Indeed, the sense of movement can be con? 54
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veyed by nothing else but composition. The mostaccurately drawn figure of man or korse or bird willrefuse to move unless its lines, and tke lines of sur=rounding objects, are so arranged as to compel tkeeye of tke spectator to follow tke direction o£ tkedesired movement. It is by composition, tkerefore,tkat Homer obtains kis effects of movement, and itis by composition tkat ke obtains all kis great effects.From tke very first ke skows some of tke quakties ofa master designer; ke always places kis subject rigkt*ly witkin tke rectangle of kis border, ke always bakances felicitously kis filled and empty spaces; and askis power of observation becomes more and moreacute kis power of design keeps pace witk it, kismost original observations being infallibly embodiedin equally original designs. An admirable instance of tke expressiveness ofHomers composition, at a comparatively early date,is tke little watercolor of Berry Pickers of 1873. J^tfirst sigkt it is a simple transcript from nature,

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