Winslow Homer essays

Winslow Homer essays Winslow Homer is regarded by many as one of North America's best painters. His work was enjoyed in the late 1800's and is still popular today. Winslow's use of colour, perspective, and subject matter is still intriguing. Winslow Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 24, 1836 and was the first of four children in his family. In 1842, his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Winslow became an apprentice to a lithographer, J.H. Bufford. After he completed his apprenticeship in 1854, he left home to become a free lance illustrator. In 1859, Homer moved to New York and became a student at the National Academy of Design in New York City. There he studied painting with Fredric Rondel. Later he covered Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, and visited the Potomac outside of Washington in October, until 1862. In 1862, Winslow Homer attended a campaign in Virginia, were he painted his first oil paintings. These would be the first of many that would make him famous. For two years, he made trips to the Civil War front where he produced paintings and illustrations. These paintings were of soldiers, horses, and prisoners. Instead of painting scenes of fighting during the war, he painted the casual times, which was unique to the other paintings of the painters at that time. After the war paintings, he went to France to paint the countryside, and to Paris, until 1867, when he came back with prisoners from the front. From 1868 to 1870, he visited the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Adirondack Mountains painting wilderness scenes. Most of these paintings included wildlife, hunters, and hunts. Winslow spent most of his time doing these types of paintings. In 1872, he moved to Tenth Street Studios in New York to paint privately. That following summer in Gloucester, Massachusetts he did his first water colour series and engravings of the seaside. Two years later, he did his last illustrations for Harper's Week...