July 18 — Winslow Homer at the Met

 I was lucky to stumble into this show today and it ends July 31, so act fast if you want to see it.

Winslow Homer painted action scenes in the US Civil War and continued painting into the earliest decade of the 20th Century. He painted scenes in a lot of places I have sailed: Key West, The Bahamas, Bermuda, and along the coast of the Atlantic coast of the US, especially Florida and Maine. He also painted in places I have never sailed: England, Cuba  and where the waters are too shallow— the Adirondacks.

He painted houses, fish, fruits, troubled race relations, hunters and bucolic childhood scenes, but mostly sea scenes, of trouble, terror and rescue. Here are a few of my favorites from his watery genre.

I cropped this one,  “Gulf Stream”, erroneously, clipping out the waterspout to the right, but the man has no propulsion or rudder and is surrounded by some hungry sharks. The schooner in the background may save him; otherwise he is doomed.

Next “Fair Breeze” a happy broad starboard reach, the boat’s sole has fish eyes staring out  and the lighthouse is just off to the port bow in the distance. Happy campers, the boy at the helm, the man at the sheet but no life vests and the kid forwards is sprawled dangerously.

Some rocks at Proust Neck in Maine after the “Nor’easter”:

“Fog Warning”, is next but in my experience fog does not give you a warning. Some big cod if he can make it back to the mothership. Have you noticed that he likes to paint from off the port quarter?

And finally one of Homer’s dramatic rescue scenes, this one involving a new tangled apparatus:

A good show with many more pieces as well, but only until the end of this month, so I rushed home to get this out to you.