Winslow Homer - The Obtuse Bard (draft 20150402) screen 095b
[CONTENTS MENU] FIRST PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

WINSLOW HOMER - EIGHT BELLS PAINTING plus lower right detail
The second image is a detail image of the man in the lower right corner, who is looking at Charles Sr. An additional, subtle image of another man is marked by the red oval. This man's image shows his head, shoulders, and his hat which looks like the fishermen's hats, but the front brim appears to be turned up. His image appears to be defined only by white. He may be difficult to see, but once you see him, the image is more realistic than the man looking over to Charles Sr.

In a Homer painting, be on the lookout for whiteish areas like this, because you may often be able to make out an image of something that is not there, at least not there in the context of the physical objects represented, but "in addition." Also, do not be surprised to see a switching image. They are common.

Homer spent about 25 years drawing lines as a lithographer. The man drawn here, marked with a red oval, appears to be a kind of line drawing. Recall La Farge's 1905 speech in which he stated,
Through all these thousands and thousands of years I go back and feel that, after all, the only one who has drawn as distinctly and as well, with that firmness of touch, that far down feeling of nature is perhaps derived from such ancestry but happens to have been born on the fierce wave-beaten coast of New England, and the only man who has ever drawn exactly upon the lines of the dwellers with the cave-bear is a great American painter, as great as any in the world, Winslow Homer.
We previously mentioned two characteristics of primal man
  1. line drawings with minimal detail
  2. seeing illusions of spiritual things
John La Farge was not talking about Homer's career as a lithographer, but Homer's use of line drawings in his paintings. This seems to be an example of Homer's use of line drawings to represent illusions of spiritual images.

[CONTENTS MENU] FIRST PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Copyright 1992-2015 Peter Bueschen
The presentation is available at The Obtuse Bard website http://obtusebard.org.