Prout's Neck, Breaking Wave
1887
Medium
Transparent watercolor, with touches of opaque watercolor, rewetting, blotting and scraping, over resist and traces of graphite, on medium weight, moderately textured, ivory wove paper, laid down on cream wove paper
Dimensions
38 × 54.4 cm (15 × 21 7/16 in.)
Classification
watercolor
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
16818
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Philip Beam has identified the site for Prout’s Neck, Breaking Wave as “the shoreline a little above water’s edge in the vicinity of Cannon Rock, looking toward High Cliff,” adding that Homer “fished from this point almost daily during the summer and fall and must have seen such waves "a thousand times" (Beam 1966, n.p.). Homer’s familiarity with the site is born out by the techniques that he used to capture the relentless churning movement of the massive wave. Although he used very little graph...
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...