The most suave cat in cartoon history.

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zitterberg:

Henrik Sahlstrom

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thebobartlett:

Speaking of boats. The relationship between this Homer and this Eakins fascinates me. Thomas Eakins’ ‘Sailing’ (Philadelphia Museum of Art) was dated and exhibited in 1875. Winslow Homer’s ‘Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)’ (National Gallery of Art) was post dated 1873-1876 and was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 in Philadelphia where it received much praise. The New York Tribune proclaimed it the greatest picture in that or any other exhibition. (Of course Eakins’ ‘Gross Clinic’ was also exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition, but not in the Art pavilion, it was bizarrely delegated to the U.S.Army Hospital pavilion) There are some watercolours by Homer with similar sailing compositions done after he started visiting Gloucester in 1873. But, it doesn’t seem likely that Eakins would have seen them. Eakins had already painted the most famous American boating picture ‘Max Schmitt in a Single Scull’ (Metropolitan Museum) in 1871, fresh upon his return from studying with Gerome at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. (Eakins and Homer were both in Paris in 1867 but there is no indication of them meeting) Eakins tended to be more original and studied more directly from nature, while Homer seems to have had a keen eye for what was happening culturally and pictorially around him. Regardless of who influenced whom in painting the boating pictures, (and granted, they may have both been influenced by some long lost engraving in a popular magazine of the time) these pictures are powerful examples of artists portraying an everyday event which captures and encapsulates the feeling of America at that moment. 

thebobartlett:

For the month of September, I’ve been working on this painting entitled, ‘The Light Years’.  It is inspired by Winslow Homer’s ‘Summer Night’ 1890.  Obviously, the subject is similar; two women dancing by the sea. But it is meant to be an homage not a redux or pastiche. This is why I’ve been studying Homer so intensely this month, to better understand his work and motivations. Visually, the two paintings are similar in their cinematic qualities; but very different in their compositional choices. I’d gotten the idea from a dream I had while traveling around the world last Spring. I think we were in Ios, Greece. I awoke and did a little thumbnail sketch. I’d dreamt that I was working on a painting of Betsy and her friend Alyssa dancing on wedding rock, our favorite rock on Wheaton Island (we got married on this rock).  On our way to the island this Summer, we stopped by our friends’ house who live on Prout’s Neck, right next door to The Winslow Homer House and Studio.  I’ve been there many times over the years, in fact my first visits to Maine were to Prout’s Neck in 1985.  Our friends’ live in a new house on Checkley Point where the old Checkley Point Inn was located before it burned early in the last century. Their yard was once the side yard of Homer’s studio and often the setting for his paintings looking across the waters toward Saco. The story goes that Winslow Homer was at the Checkley Point Inn the night he saw two women dancing against the reflection of the moon on the sea.  Homer originally entitled the painting ‘Buffalo Gals’ because the song that was playing when he saw them dancing was the then popular song, “Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon.” While visiting there, it dawned on me that the painting I wanted to do was in a direct lineage with the Homer painting. Later in the Summer, Betsy’s friend, Alyssa, came up to the island to pose with Betsy for studies.  For the most part, I never worry about whether an idea is original or not. I sort of like it when I can find precedents. Then, my painting becomes a version of an idea. The way that things are inter-connected fascinates me. We can google anything to find similar images to any idea we might have. Originality is over-rated. I feel that often, too many art schools try to teach it. One can’t teach originality. One either has it or they don’t.  I feel that schools try to artificially force students to be original. We praise artists who are ‘original’, and discount all others as ‘derivative’. I’ve tried to show in the posts this month, that great art can be influenced by its predecessors and not lose any of its power. Homer professed to not be influenced by any other art. And surely, late in his life, he was solitary in his pursuit of his own personal vision.  His originality cannot be denied.  But, simultaneously, he was very easily and quickly influenced by the current art of his time.  Homer was the first in a long line of great American painters to retreat from mainstream culture to pursue their art.  Robert Henri, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, N.C. Wyeth, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, to name a few, all followed in Homer’s footsteps. http://tinyurl.com/68yz6u2 They were all equally independent and original.  In these times, when artists try desperately to be ‘original’ and simultaneously ‘fit in’ to the constraints of what it means to be ‘contemporary’, it is good to look at a painter like Winslow Homer. Homer was very aware of the art of his day, but he was headstrong in the pursuit of his very own private world, a world which was small, insular, but when seen with the advantages of the distance of time, a world which extrapolates out to the universal macrocosm. Today, Betsy and I travel back down to Prout’s Neck to celebrate a friend’s 90th birthday tomorrow night at Checkley Point.  With any luck they’ll play ‘Buffalo Gals’.