“When you paint, try to put down exactly what you see. Whatever else you have to offer will come out anyway” (Hodge 126). Quoted by the master American realism artist, Winslow Homer was skilled in the art of realism. He painted only what he observed from nature and his surroundings. Homer’s styles, mediums and subjects helped him create the artwork that he was so famous for. Probably his most famous painting, The Snap of the Whip is painted by Homer with incredible realism and accomplishment. As seen through his many landscapes, Winslow Homer enjoyed painting and studying the glorious nature that surrounded him all throughout his lifetime. s
The famous American realist, Winslow Homer, lived from 1836-1910, was born in Boston. The only art lessons he acquired were from his mother who was a watercolorist. Soon after being apprenticed to a lithographer at age 19, Homer moved to New York and started working as a magazine illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. There he started painting landscapes without format training. As the Civil war rose up Homer was commissioned by Harper’s Weekly to paint depictions the camp life (Strickland 85), and “his powerful record of the horrors of the war” (Hodge 127). When he traveled to Paris, Winslow Homer studied the paintings and art form of artists such as Millet, Manet and Courbet. In 1875 Homer left his illustrating job and started to paint for himself but struggled financially. After living two years in an English fishing village in Northumberland, Homer moved back to the Maine coast of the United States in 1882 (Hodge 127). There he painted some of his more famous paintings such as “The Gulf Stream” and “The Life Line,” showing man-against-elements (Strickland 85). Regarded as the greatest American ...
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...onclusion, it can be drawn from the life of Winslow Homer that he was a proficient realism artist, who’s work comparatively, was rivaled to many other famous painters. Similar to every artist, Winslow Homer utilized his own specific set of styles and mediums to be able to create the lasting effect of the subjects of his artwork. Homer’s completion of The Snap of the Whip in 1872 was a perfect example of American Realism at its finest.
Works Cited
Hodge, Susie. The Great Artists and Their Most Important Works. London: Quercus publishing, 2010.
Strickland, Carol. The Annotated Mona Lisa. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2007.
Winslow Homer." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 30 Nov. 2013http://www.encyclopedia.com
Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer paintings, quotes and biography, 30 Nov. 2013http://www.winslowhomer.org/snap-the-whip.jsp.
Born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1837, Thomas was taken to the United States at the age of 7. (Ency. Bio. Vol. 11). He was educated in Philadelphia public schools for his elementary years and then indentured to a wood engraving firm in 1853-1856. (Am.Nat.Bio.Vol 15). He had three brothers who were artist, but he learned to paint from his brother Edward Moran. He did do some watercolors during his apprentictionship and in 1856, he painted his first oil painting titled, Among the Ruins There He Lingered. (Vol.11). Moran still working closely with his brother became an informer student of Philadelphia marine artist James Hamilton. Hamilton may have introduced him to the work of J.M.W, turner and a belief in close study of nature in his foundation of panting. (Vol.15) Moran exhibited landscapes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine arts for the first time in 1856 and then later elected academician in 1861. He continued to exhibit there through 1905. (Vol.15). 1862 Thomas married Mary Nimmo who had always thought to be her husbands student. (Vol.15). The beginning of his life had just started and didn't know that he would accomplish so many feats with his artwork of nature.
Besides bright or dim colors, and fine or rough brush strokes, artists use centralized composition to convey their interpretations in "The Acrobat's Family with a Monkey," "Amercian Gothic," "The Water-Seller," and "The Third of May,1808.”
January 28, 1912, Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming. He was the youngest of five boys, and began taking an interest in art after his oldest brother, Charles Pollock. He later enrolled at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, first doing sculptures, and then later doing paintings. After getting kicked out for starting fights, he moved to New York and shadowed Thomas Hart Benton, attending the Art Students League. Benton’s family took Jackson under their wing. But after his father died suddenly, Pollock became depressed. This lead to excessive drinking and the threatening of Charles’ wife with an ax that he threw at one of Charles’ paintings scheduled for an upcoming exhibition. He was then kicked out, and the Great Depression started to take place.
This essay was written to explain the differences between Wood’s painting and N.C. Wyeth’s 1922 illustration. The painting/illustration was inspired from a poem called Paul Revere’s Ride written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The image shows a written scene from the poem that describes Paul Revere’s ride through town as he alarmed the town’s folk. It’s an event that happened during the American Revolution. The comparison between the two images will include discussions about its viewpoints, shadows, scale, and other details that describe the picture.
In response to the war efforts of World War I, African Americans played a rather significant role in the fight for America. One African American whose passion played out not only on the battle field, yet on a canvas, was Horace Pippin. Pippin was a war veteran who lost his right arm by a shot fired from a sniper during the war. Although he lost the use of his arm, he did not allow this to hinder his creativity after World War I; he continued to paint. As many African Americans were forced, Pippin was sent overseas to serve in French units. This was due to the fact that American generals were discriminatory against the idea of African Americans serving in their units (Cardoza and Hume, p.381). Although this is true, the black soldiers were highly regarded by the French, which made for a harmonious collaboration. With this being said, I believe that it was Pippin's personal experiences in the war that made his artwork so true to the brutalities of World War I. Pippin absorbed the animosity around him, and from it he cultivated an outlet of raw artwork. Although it is not one of his more famous pieces, one piece that I truly admire is called Soldiers with Gas Masks in Trench. Drawn on a page of Pippin's diary, it not only documented observations,
Jacob Lawrence is celebrated for his insightful depictions of American and, in particular, African American life. Best known for his epic series of paintings on such subjects as the lives of Harriet Tubman and Toussaint L'Ouverture, he has also created numerous prints, murals, and drawings. Among the latter are a delightful set of twenty-three illustrations...
The History of this person is important because without his painting of The Great Migration people like us today wouldn’t be able to put a strong picture together about the migration of African-Americans to the North. The paintings show us the hardship that they faced in the South moving to the North. For the African American migrating from the south, didn’t know what to expect moving North as shown in the picture
Jackson Pollock was an American abstract artist born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He was the youngest of his five brothers. Even though he was born on a farm, he never milked a cow and he was terrified of horses because he grew up in California. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and proceeded to move to New York City with his older brother, Charles, and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Thomas Benton was already a great artist at the time in which Pollock studied with him. Benton acted like the father figure in Pollock’s life to replace the original that wasn’t there. Benton was known for his large murals that appear on ceilings or walls. “Jack was a rebellious sort at all times,” recalls his classmate and friend, artist Harold Lehman. He grew his hair long and helped pen a manifesto denouncing athletics, even though “he had a muscular build and the school wanted to put him on the football team,” says former teacher Doug Lemon. Pollock always was upset with himself in his studies because he had troubles drawing things like they were supposed to look. From 1938 to 1942, Jackson joined a Mexican workshop of people with a painter named David Siqueiros. This workshop painted the murals for the WPA Federal Art Projects. This new group of people started experimenting with new types of paint and new ways of applying it to large canvas. People say that this time period was when Jackson was stimulated with ideas from looking at the Mexican or WPA murals. Looking at paintings from Picasso and the surrealists also inspired Jackson at this time. The type of paint they used was mixing oil colors with paint used for painting cars. Jackson noticed that the shapes and colors they created were just as beautiful as anything else was. Jackson realized that you didn’t have to be able to draw perfect to make beautiful paintings. Jackson started developing a whole new way of painting that he had never tried before and his paintings were starting to look totally different from before.
The first thing to notice about this painting is how incredibly involved and realistic the brushwork is. The couple’s faces are so delicately rendered. Every wrinkle is visible and every hair strand is in it’s place. The soft folds and patterns of their clothing, and the grain of the vertical boards on the house, are highly developed and reveal Wood’s incredible attention to detail. The man, especially, appears to be nearly photorealistic.
Charles Willson Peale was born on April 15, 1741 in Queen Anne’s, Maryland, he is best known for his portraits during the American revolution. As a young adult Peale worked as a saddler, watchmaker, and silversmith, this is how is art career started off his legacy. He started to exchange saddles for art lessons with John Hesselius, and during this time Peale found his true calling for art (Britannica). After this Peales career took off after a group of Maryland patrons sent him to London, where he studied for 3 years under American expatriate, Benjamin West .” (Britannica).
On Saturday, March 15, 2014, I visited the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The gallery #753, which is a part of so-called American Wing, features oil paintings of the revolutionary period in America. The paintings seen in this gallery celebrate heroes and hard-fought battles of the new nation. The most popular type of painting of that time remained portraiture. Portraits in extremely large numbers figured in interiors, where they were arranged to convey not only domestic, but political messages as well. Hence, it is natural, that such iconic figure like George Washington became a model for numerous artists of that era, including Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, for whom Washington actually sat. Two exceptional portraits of Washington, the general and the the first President of the United States are highlighted in this paper.
Landscape painting was extremely important during the middle of the nineteenth century. One of the leading practitioners of landscape painters in America was Thomas Cole. He visited many places seeking the “natural” world to which he might utilize his direct observations to convey the untainted nature by man to his audience. His works resolved to find goodness in American land and to help Americans take pride in their unique geological features created by God. Thomas Cole inspired many with his brilliant works by offering satisfaction to those seeking the “truth” (realism) through the works of others.
The Romantic era’s new “American identity” was realized by the 18th-century’s literary, social, and artistic push for the creation of a culture that was unique to American society and the expansionist urge to expand America’s political realm of power. This was achieved with the influence of manifest destiny and expansionism, the emergence of transcendentalism and transcendentalist literature, and the identity of the American man being characterized by the traits of the “common man”, and the exploration of nature and the frontier through art.
In its aesthetical orientation and practical aspect, hyperrealism is rather close to pop art, the primary commonality being complex figurative nature of the image and composition. As it can be noticed from the portrait of Frank James, precise, unbiased and unemotional replication of reality. Such copying virtually imitates specific nature of photography with its documental precision and automatism of visual capture.
However, from the beginning of his Poussin’s career, his paintings were easily recognized for his notable prominence on line and contours. This revealed that he was more interested in craftsmanship as well as the spur of the tradition. In his Classicism, the pose, gesture and facial expression of each portrait was important as it depicted the overall meaning without detailed thinking.