Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer (1836–1910) was born in Boston and was largely self-taught; his mother, an amateur watercolourist, was his first teacher. At nineteen he was apprenticed to a Boston commercial lithographer, and he spent nearly twenty years as an illustrator, much of it for Harper's Weekly, which sent him to the front lines of the Civil War. Paintings developed from those sketches, including Home, Sweet Home, won him election as a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1865. He is best known for his marine subjects. Two years at Cullercoats on the Northumberland coast in 1881–82 turned his work towards working people and the sea, and from 1883 he lived at Prouts Neck, Maine, where he painted large sea pieces such as Undertow and Eight Bells, and where he died. He also worked extensively in watercolour, which he took up regularly at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1873 and used above all to record his working holidays. Here: Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), his picture of a father and three boys out sailing, which drew wide praise from critics.