Art Institute of Chicago

The Lone Boat, North Woods Club, Adirondacks

Winslow Homer

Date

1892

Medium

Watercolor, with rewetting, blotting, and scraping, over traces of graphite, on thick, rough-textured, ivory wove paper

Culture

United States

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

The Lone Boat, North Woods Club, Adirondacks speaks powerfully of the fisherman’s communion with nature. The medium of watercolor offered the perfect metaphor as well as technical means to express this relationship; its very wetness allows the forms of man and nature to run together, absorbed by the hazy atmosphere. In The Lone Boat , Homer constructed a nearly abstract composition along a strong horizon line, with the trees on the shore and their reflections in the water forming a symmetrical design. The effect is similar to that achieved when a still-wet sheet is folded at the center and blotted. Homer painted the sky using multiple hues and a complex array of techniques, including resist , blotting, scraping, and wet-into-wet brushwork. The resulting textures and contrasts create a strong sense of movement, of clouds accumulating and dispersing while light shifts and changes across their forms.

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