Sun and Clouds
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
Accession Number
F1913.31a-b
Tags
About this artwork
To 1913
Art Historical Context
Winslow Homer, a towering figure in American Realism, captured the raw power of nature in *Sun and Clouds* (1882). This evocative painting likely portrays a woman amid a dramatic seascape, where piercing sunlight pierces brooding clouds over the ocean—a hallmark of Homer's fascination with the untamed American coast. By the early 1880s, Homer had retreated to his Prouts Neck studio in Maine, immersing himself in marine subjects that conveyed both beauty and peril, moving away from his earlier Civil War illustrations toward profound meditations on humanity's place in the natural world. Homer's...