Winslow Homer celebrated in Maine this summer

Winslow Homer's (1836-1910) enduringly-popular art---from genre scenes of boys fishing to fierce seascapes---immortalized American life and the land itself at the point when the country transitioned from an agrarian society, centered on farms and small towns, to an industrial nation.

Curator Thomas Denenberg explores how Homer helped shape a national identity at the turn of the 20th century in an exhibiton at Maine's Portland Museum of Art timed for the 100th anniversary of the artist's death.

From June 5 to Sept. 6, 2010, this small but succinct show, titled "Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place," features twenty watercolors and oils from the museum's collection, including the entire gift of Homer paintings and graphics from Charles Shipman Payson.

Homer exhibited his work at the Portland Museum during his lifetime and, in 2006, the museum acquired his famous seaside studio at Prout's Neck. A major restoration of the studio is underway.

Several of Homer's most well-known works will be shown such as "Artists Sketching in the White Mountains" (1868), a scene depicting three painters (one is Homer) at work above New Hampshire's Mt. Washington, painted during the post-Civil War period when the White Mountains were promoted as a national landscape, thereby attracting a bevy of artists and tourists.

Fourteen watercolors, a medium usually stowed away in museum vaults for their delicate nature, will be aired in the exhibit, including a few of Homer's sporting scenes.

In an effort to bring the artist's work to a wide audience, searchable and zoomable access to more than 250 of Homer’s wood engravings, many published in Harper's Weekly, will also be available online at the start of the exhibition. The virtual gallery will be viewable at www.portlandmuseum.org.

A few other area museums are also exhibiting Homer. On June 26, Saco Museum opens "In a Place by Himself: The Graphic World of Winslow Homer," which includes his late etchings, such as Eight Bells (1889), centered on the poweful force of the Atlantic.

"Homer to Hopper: American Watercolors from the Farnsworth Collection" is on view now through Sept. 12, at the Farnsworth Museum, in the coastal Maine town of Rockland. Besides Homer, the other heavyweight-name watercolorists on display are Frank Benson, Charles Burchfield, Arthur B. Davies, Abbot Fuller Graves, Willliam Stanley Haseltine,  Edward Hopper, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, and William Zorach, all from the museum's holdings.

The Farnswoth's Homer watercolor titled "Seven Boys in a Dory," 1873, is a tranquil scene of which collector Bill Koch owns the same composition in oil (see an image in Julie Carlson's article "Bordeaux, Boats & Botero").

Interestingly, the Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire is also touting an American watercolor show of the same name. "Homer to Hopper" at the Currier closes on June 7.