Winslow Homer Studio - Southeast Corner, 2012 ©trentbellphotography

To commemorate the opening of the newly restored Winslow Homer Studio, the Portland Museum of Art will present the exhibition Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine. On view through December 30, 2012, this unique exhibition features 38 major oils, watercolors, and etchings created during Homer’s tenure in the Studio (1883–1910). The works come from museums and private collectors throughout the country, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Many of these works have not been on exhibition in Maine* for a more than a generation and, due to their extraordinary rarity and importance to their institutional owners, will likely not be seen together again for decades to come.

Weatherbeaten explores the range and complexity of Homer’s mature artistic vision which came to fruition at his Prouts Necks studio on the Maine coast. Inspired by the rugged beauty and dramatic weather of this locale, he produced works that revolutionized marine painting in American art and created an iconic and enduring image of the New England coast. The Portland Museum of Art’s painting Weatherbeaten (1894) serves as both the namesake for the exhibition and a quintessential example of the artist’s late work. This image of rough waves crashing against a rocky shore embodies Homer’s ability to capture the specificity of a place, while simultaneously meditating upon the timeless forces of nature.

Winslow Homer
1836 - 1910
Fox Hunt, 1893
oil on canvas
38 x 68 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Joseph E. Temple Fund. Photo: Barbara Katus.

*We discovered that Homer's cousin, Augusta, was married to famed sculptor, Saint-Gaudens. Their house in New Hampshire is designed as a National Historic Site and has a home, studios and gardens. Over 100 of his artworks are in the galleries and on the grounds, from heroic public monuments to expressive portrait reliefs, and the gold coins which changed the look of American coinage. 

Pages: 1 · 2

More Articles

• Spirits by Deborah Masters at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon
• Memories of Seventies Dublin: As the Decade Moved On, the City Changed and We Were Changing With It; Not All Changes Were Welcome
• Too High To Drive: States Grapple With Setting Limits On Weed Use Behind Wheel; Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Indiana are Among States That Forbid Driving at Any THC Level
• Iberia: Reminders that Power Can Vanish and What Turns Out to Be Important is How You Can Live Today
• Christmas Presence: Jewelry, a Musical Powder Box, a Bike, See's Candy and Double Acrostics
• The Durrells in Corfu Return With Season Three Based on Gerald Durrell’s Trilogy with a Keeley Hawes Interview
• The Making of Masterpiece Theater's The Miniaturist and Petronella Oortman’s Dolls' House in Amsterdam's Rijksmusum
• Chicago Institute of Art and John Singer Sargent, Georg Jensen and Arms, Armor, Medieval, and Renaissance
• Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth at the Famed Bodleian Libraries
• Have a Trip in Mind This Summer? Travel Advisories From the US State Department