Art Institute of Chicago

Adirondacks Guide

Winslow Homer

Date

1892

Medium

Transparent watercolor with touches of opaque watercolor, rewetting, blotting and scraping, over traces of graphite, on thick, moderately textured, ivory wove paper (top edge trimmed)

Culture

United States

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Adirondacks Guide is a sensitive portrait of the guide Rufus Wallace, shown returning from duck hunting in his canoe. Although the background of lake and sky are only loosely suggested, the details of the old man’s face, beard, and still-strong body are carefully rendered with brushstrokes of diluted color. His gaze, forward and slightly elevated, is evocative; one senses that the old man is at once alert to nature and lost in his own contemplations.

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