EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
In 1881 Winslow Homer, 45 and already a prominent American artist, took off to England for nearly two years, living in the isolated fishing village of Cullercoats. “Coming Away: Winslow Homer and England,” a new exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum, casts that coastal sojourn as a turning point in Homer’s art, leading to changes both in technique, as he absorbed the work of English artists, and in subject matter, as Homer turned to working-class women as subjects.
Co-organized by MAM and the Worcester Art Museum of Massachusetts, “Coming Away” is anchored by a major painting from each museum: “Hark! The Lark” (1882), from MAM, which depicts three fisherwomen listening attentively with a light-suffused sky behind them; and “The Gale,” from Worcester’s collection, in which a fierce wind assails a woman carrying a child on her back.
This exhibit also includes the remarkable painting “The Life Line,” which shows a dramatic rescue at sea by pulley. Homer’s painting “was an immediate sensation when it was first displayed in New York, in 1884,” historian Nathaniel Philbrick wrote in an appreciation, “partly because the painting illustrated the recently retrofitted breeches buoy — a kind of pants-equipped zip line, invented a generation earlier, with which a lifesaver could transport a shipwreck survivor to shore.”
“Coming Away” also includes works by English artists from the period, so viewers can see Homer’s art in context. The exhibit continues through May 20 at the Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Drive. Info: mam.org.
Art historian Sarah Burns will give a talk titled “Winslow Homer, International Man of Mystery” at 6:15 p.m. April 5 at the museum.