WINSLOW HOMER - THE BOAT BUILDERS SKETCH Here we have a drawing that Homer also did in 1873. Notice the relationships presented here. The boys are to the model ships as is the ship in the background to the model ships. We might say that the boys relationship to their model ships is like a mother to her child. Now notice the rocks on the upper right with an opening between them. View rocks as silhouettes and with imagination, try to imagine that the larger rock is the silhouette of a mother looking down at her baby, just as the boy looks at his baby-ship. Imagine the silhouette of a mother holding a baby face to face. Do not expect to actually see it, do as Coleridge said of Allston.

To you alone does it seem to have been given to know what nature is -- not the dead shapes, the outward letter, but nature revealing itself in the phenomena, or rather attempting to reveal itself. Now the power of producing the true ideals is no other, in my belief, than to take the will for the deed. The great artist does that which nature would do, if only the disturbing forces were abstracted.