Winslow Homer - The Obtuse Bard (draft 20150402) screen 096
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WINSLOW HOMER - EIGHT BELLS 1886

Lowell's essay The Progress of the World and Homer's painting Eight Bells were both from the same year, 1886. Lowell's ideas are relevant thoughts for interpreting this painting. Lowell wrote,
As at noon every day the captain of a ship tries to learn his whereabouts of the sun, that he may know how much nearer he is to his destined port, and how far he may have been pushed away from his course by the last gale or drifted from it by unsuspected currents, so on board this ship of ours, The Earth, in which that abstract entity we call The World is a passenger, we strive to ascertain, from time to time, with such rude instruments as we possess, what progress we have made and in what direction. lt is rather by a kind of dead reckoning than by taking the height of the Sun of Righteousness, which should be our seamark, that we accomplish this, for such celestial computations are gone somewhat out of fashion.
Homer's artworks are as serious and thought provoking as Lowell's essay. Yet there is more. On the surface, Winslow Homer was very serious, but there is much biographical evidence to support that he had another side that was not. He loved jokes and pranks and double meanings. Eight Bells is a serious painting. That is what the thing appears to be, and it is, but there is more. We can see from this embedded image of his father, that perhaps the painting also has a not so serious side. This might be another instance supporting the idea that Homer included his jokes, pranks, and double meanings in his artworks, as Vedder did with the Valentine cards. Winslow Homer's artworks are a shadow of himself and there is evidence of his entire self in his works.

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