Weatherbeaten
Weatherbeaten, 1894
Winslow Homer (United States, 1836—1910)
oil on canvas, 28 1/2 x 48 3/8 inches
Bequest of Charles Shipman Payson
Portland Museum of Art, Maine, 1988.55.1
From the time he arrived at Prouts Neck in 1883 to his death there in 1910, Winslow Homer’s view of the coast in Maine provided the inspiration that made it possible for him to create many of America’s best-known and loved paintings of the Northeast’s dramatic coastline. These uninhabited images of crashing waves and rocks, alternately brooding and ecstatic, transformed the marine painting tradition with their emphatically human vantage point and their powerful exploration of the theme of struggle and survival. Weatherbeaten can be easily appreciated for how it captures the look and feel of the ocean through its dynamic composition and virtuoso brushwork. The painting also demonstrates the brute confrontation of water and rock, light and dark, liquid and solid, transient and immutable, man and nature, life and death that characterize Homer’s late work.
The lessons found here introduce Homer’s art and career and highlight Weatherbeaten as an expression of place in art. Following his example, students consider what place means to them and they develop a greater appreciation for their own environment. Through reading, writing, art, and science, students explore Weatherbeaten and share their own expressions of place.