American Everyman: Winslow Homer

William R. Cross, Author, Winslow Homer: American Passage 

Registration requested; walk-ins welcome 

$12 members $15 non-members 

In Winslow Homer: American Passage, biographer William R. Cross unveils his subject’s role as the visual counterpart to American literary giants such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson – and immersed as they were in a print economy that shaped Homer’s sensitivity to the fundamental role of design.   

He was witness to both the rhythms of sea, storm, tide and season and the times in which he lived. That period included the U.S. Civil War, colonial tyranny, invention and industrialization, and the challenge of achieving a just and equitable society in the Gilded Age.  Homer’s astonishing breadth of subject, media and perspective reflects his restless mind and innovative hand.  His legacy comprises few answers but a broad range of enduring, entrancing questions.  

Join us to see afresh the man behind the art, a major American figure hidden in plain sight. 

Bill Cross is the author of Winslow Homer: American Passage, a biography of the American painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and available for purchase in the gift shop. He also curated Homer at the Beach, A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869-1880, a 2019 exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum that revealed Homer’s formation as a marine artist. Bill is a graduate of Yale College, magna cum laude, and received an MBA at Harvard Business School.  He chairs the Advisory Board of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, whose purpose is to help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity. The father of two grown sons, he lives with his wife Ellen on Cape Ann, north of Boston.