Winslow Homer - A Huntsman and Dogs

Inspired by: Winslow Homer - A Huntsman and Dog

Homer and his brother were avid hunters and anglers. They spent forty years in pursuit of their avocation. In 1886 they joined the Northwoods Club. An Adirondack hunting and fishing preserve for the well to do from NY and Boston. It was there that he created his sports paintings using members and their guides as his subjects.

When we think of Homer’s Adirondacks we see lush streams and forests, but that began to change. In the 1880’s a movement arose to save the Adirondacks from the spread of lumbering, railroads and factories. In many respects this painting is his protest banner.

The mountainside has been denuded, and the huntsman steps over the base of a tree felled by loggers. It was painted one year before the Forrest Preserve legislation provided for the establishment of the Adirondack Park. Two years later at the New York Constitutional Convention, they drew up a covenant which stated the Adirondack Forest Preserve would be "forever wild."

Winslow Homer - The Fog Warning

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Homer lived in Boston until his early twenties. He was mostly self-taught. His mother, a gifted watercolorist, got him started. After a short apprenticeship with a commercial lithographer, he began his career in illustration. For the next twenty years, he made his living working for magazines like Harper’s Weekly. He subsequently picked up a paint brush. His love was oils, but his watercolors were cheaper, they sold well, and brought him greater recognition.
He loved the ocean, and in the 1880s, he moved to Prouts Neck on the coast of Maine. It was here that he began to paint his water scenes. He not only painted the sea itself, but pitted "man against the elements" to show how powerful the water could be. He later stopped painting human figures all together and just focused on the sea. Today, Homer is known as the foremost American marine painter.
This painting was inspired by a trip to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Canada. There, aboard fishing vessels, he watched men, cast adrift on the open sea, take their chance with the waves and weather. To see the original painting:   https://bit.ly/4hSO2DK