For to Be a Farmer's Boy
1887
Medium
Transparent and opaque watercolor, with rewetting, blotting, and scraping, heightened with gum glaze, over graphite, on thick, rough-textured ivory wove paper (lower edge trimmed)
Dimensions
35.5 × 50.9 cm (14 × 20 1/16 in.)
Classification
watercolor
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
93433
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
For to Be a Farmer’s Boy was painted at Prout’s Neck, Maine, and is one of several watercolors in which Homer returned to his earlier theme of rural American childhood. Although the sky has faded and appears empty, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and FTIR analyses have yielded evidence that the artist originally painted the sky with dilute washes of chrome yellow and pink madder (both fugitive pigments), with a minute amount of vermilion, to create a glowing orange sunset. Thus, the watercolor o...
About the Artist
Winslow Homer · 1836–1910
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was one of America's greatest painters and a preeminent figure in 19th-century American art. Largely self-taught, Homer began his career as a commercial illustrator and Civil War correspondent for Harper's Weekly before becoming renowned for his powerful marine subjects and landscape paintings. His mastery of both oil and watercolor, combined with his uncompromising reali...