Homer

man who crossed the Atlantic in his own ship
and landed at Boston in the middle of the seven-
teenth century. Winslow Homer's father was
Charles Savage Homer, a hardware merchant,
and his mother was Henrietta Maria (Benson)
Homer, who came from Bucksport, Me., a town
named after her maternal grandfather. Both the
Homers and Bensons were hardy and long-lived
people. Winslow's grandfathers both lived to be
over eighty-five, and his father died at the age
of eighty-nine. His birthplace in Friend Street
was abandoned when the family, during his in-
fancy, moved to Bulfinch Street; in 1842, when
he was six years old, they went to Cambridge.
There his boyhood was passed. He was the sec-
ond of three sons. His elder brother, Charles S.
Homer, Jr., became a successful chemist, made
a fortune in the paint and varnish business in
New York, and was able to give him generous
assistance during the early part of his career
when he was struggling for recognition.

In Cambridge, Winslow Homer attended the
Washington Grammar School, Brattle Street
He was a quiet, sedate lad, whose favorite sports
were boating and fishing. As early as 1847,
when he was eleven years of age, he was fond of
drawing sketches. In school hours he stealthily
illustrated his textbooks. His father bought for
him Julian's lithographs of heads, eyes, ears, and
noses, and Victor Adam's lithographs of ani-
mals ; a few years later, when the boy was nine-
teen, he apprenticed him to Bufford, the lithog-
rapher, in Boston. Winslow Homer remained
in Bufford's establishment for two years, design-
ing title-pages for sheet-music, the portraits of
all the members of the state Senate, and a variety
of pictorial decorations for commercial uses. At
nineteen he was delicately built, rather under the
average height but very erect; he seldom mani-
fested any emotion, and was considered some-
what stolid. During his apprenticeship he met
a French wood engraver named Damereau who
gave him some useful practical instruction in
methods of drawing on the block in such wise
as to adapt his lines to the process. When the
two years of his apprenticeship were up, on his
twenty-first birthday (1857), he took a studio in
Winter Street

His first work was done for Ballou's Pictorial
In 1858 he began to send drawings to Harper's
Weekly. The next year he went to New York,
where for a short time he occupied a studio in
Nassau Street, moving in 1861 to the old Uni-
versity Building in Washington Square. He at-
tended the night school of the National Academy
of Design, and for a brief period took lessons in
painting of a French artist named Frederic

Homer

Rondel. In 1861 he was commissioned by Har-
per & Brothers to go to Washington for the pur-
pose of making drawings of Lincoln's inaugura-
tion, and later to the seat of war in Virginia,
where, during the Peninsular campaign, he was
unofficially attached to the staff of Col. Francis
C. Barlow. He sent a number of drawings of
the early engagements at Yorktown and on the
Chickahominy, together with camp scenes and
incidents of army life, to Harper's Weekly.
After his return to New York he began to paint
pictures of war subjects, including the "Sharp-
shooter on Picket Duty," "The Last Goose at
Yorktown/' "Home, Sweet Home," and "Ra-
tions," two of which were exhibited at the Na-
tional Academy in 1863, being the first paint-
ings by Homer shown there. Two of the pictures
were bought by an unknown purchaser, whose
identity was not revealed until seven years after-
ward, when he turned out to be Charles S.
Homer, Jr. Several other war paintings were
exhibited at the National Academy in 1864,1865,
and 1866, among them "Prisoners from the
Front," which is much the best of his works in
this class. It was subsequently exhibited at the
Paris International Exposition of 1867, also at
Brussels and Antwerp, and finally became the
property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York.

Homer was made an associate of the National
Academy of Design in 1864, and became an Aca-
demician in 1865. He made his first voyage to
Europe in 1867, and spent about ten months in
France, doing little work there. After this time
he continued to exhibit pictures regularly in the
National Academy, but his subjects were differ-
ent from anything he had previously shown.
They were for the most part scenes from farm
life, rustic episodes, and landscapes. Up to 1875
he also continued to contribute many drawings
to Harper's Weekly, and in 1871 he made a
series of illustrations for Every Saturday, pub-
lished in Boston. His frequent trips to Massa-
chusetts, to New Jersey, and to the Catskills, in
search of rural subjects, yielded many interesting
and original results. He spent the summer of
1873 on an island in Gloucester harbor and made
a series of delightful watercolors.

At the National Academy exhibition of 1875
he exhibited four paintings. The Centennial Ex-
position of 1876 at Philadelphia brought to view
his "Snap the Whip" and "The American Type,"
with a group of four watercolors. The first of
his important Adirondack pictures, "The Two
Guides," was painted in 1876 and was shown
two years later at the Academy. It was bought
by Thomas B. Clarke, who became his most loyal

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