On the sands with Winslow Homer’s “The Wreck.”
Art beyond the familiar: We’ll tell you where to find it.
“The Wreck,” an 1896 oil painting by Winslow Homer, holds a special place in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s history that may not be apparent at first to visitors who come across it as they walk through the second floor of the Oakland museum.
This was the first painting ever to enter the museum’s collection. It was purchased in 1896 out of the inaugural Carnegie International, then called the “Annual Exhibition.” The judges of that exhibition certainly signaled its importance — giving the painting the Chronological Medal and a $5,000 prize. That would be about $153,000 today, and it was the highest payment that Homer ever received for one of his works.
The shipwreck of Homer’s title is surprisingly nowhere in sight. Rather it’s implied by the watchers, including women, huddled atop a far dune. They overlook a rough ocean that crashes in foaming white spray against the shore.
Instead of the wreck itself, the painting’s focus is on the arriving rescue team, which struggles to drag a lifeboat across the sand hills. The coastguardsman in the foreground beckons to the viewer as well as to his team. Homer underscores the seriousness of the situation with the menacing sky and the somber palette of grays and browns.
The painting was based upon a sketch the artist made in 1885 or 1886 of a disaster off the coast of Atlantic City, N.J., although the exact incident that inspired the work isn’t clear. Shipwrecks were not uncommon in the period, and many lives were lost, making that subject one that would resonate with audiences during the period. In 1896 Homer wrote to an arts patron that he had “at last” used, not the subject of the sketch, but “the subject which the sketch would suggest.”
Andrew Carnegie had established the
Annual Exhibition the year after the Venice Biennale opened in Italy as the first large international contemporary exhibition and one that still draws a half million visitors from around the world. The Annual Exhibition, for its part, was for decades the only major international exhibition of contemporary art in the U.S.
The Pittsburgh steel magnate’s directive was to build a collection through the purchase of the “Old Masters of Tomorrow,” the artists of the moment whose work would stand the test of time.
The acquisition of “The Wreck” — along with that of James A. McNeill Whistler’s “Arrangement in Black: Portrait of Señor Pablo de Sarasate” of the same year — began a tradition that continues to this day. More than 300 works have entered the Pittsburgh museum’s permanent collection through the Internationals over the decades.
A leading 19th-century American painter, Homer (1836-1910) was born in Boston and began his career as an apprentice printmaker. He was next a freelance illustrator and retained a winter home in New York until the 1880s.
His reputation was established through illustrations of Civil War scenes that he made on the war front in Virginia for Harper’s Weekly between 1862 and 1865.
Afterward he spent 10 months in France, where he was influenced to paint directly from nature. In 1881 and 1882, he lived near Tynemouth, England, a fishing village where he observed the residents’ rugged lives, including the omnipresent anxiety over whether a family member would return home from a day of fishing.
In 1883, he moved to Prout’s Neck in coastal Maine, where he resided until his death.
When not on loan to exhibitions in the U.S. or Europe, the painting may be seen in the museum’s Scaife Galleries 6. Go to the second floor and ask a guard for directions. For more information, visit www.cmoa.org.