Croquet Match

Croquet Match is the last of a series of five oil paintings Winslow Homer produced in the mid-1860s that portray the lawn game. Recently imported from England, croquet was celebrated at the time as the sole sport that men and women could play together with propriety. Homer’s painting, though, shows only women; moreover, only one of them, the figure on the right leaning casually on her stick, appears at all engaged in the game, marked by the metal hoops and balls scattered across the grass. The other women are posed as spectators on or near the veranda of a summer residence or hotel; the mountains in the distance suggest the setting of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, a popular tourist destination that was the setting for other paintings of middle-class vacationers that Homer made soon after this one. None of the elegant young women in Croquet Match seems to pay attention either to the game or to the others; each looks past her companions with an air that might be fashionable hauteur or world-weariness. The sense of subtle isolation and unease is emphasized by the rigid divisions of space created by the porch floor and column, which physically separates the figures from one another as it cuts the viewer off from the natural world of the landscape beyond. The social relations between the women are deliberately enigmatic, but what appears to be a discarded folded note on the porch floor suggests an unexplained narrative, perhaps one concerning the course of romantic love, for which the game of croquet figured as a contemporary metaphor.

Homer began his series of croquet paintings as he abandoned the Civil War scenes that had launched his career as a painter. He had painted all but Croquet Match when he left for a ten-month visit to France, in 1866 and 1867. During his time abroad, Homer evidently became aware of the Japanese prints that had just recently begun flooding the Western market, as well as the burgeoning movement known as impressionism, whose practitioners focused on the purely visual nature of their subjects, rendered in terms of the transient effects of natural light reflected from surfaces. Croquet Match reveals these influences in its bright light and color, the flattening of forms and space and their asymmetrical organization, and the geometric structure provided by the architectural elements.

Homer shared his interest in themes from modern life with his French contemporaries, but he was drawn to such subjects as the croquet match from his early work as an artist-reporter for popular periodicals. The Terra Foundation’s Croquet Match, in fact, served as a basis for a wood engraving published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1869. Experience as an illustrator sharpened Homer’s eye for fashionable social types and for current tastes and trends—not only the mania for croquet in the mid-1860s but the new freedom and visibility for women of leisure that the game embodied. Beginning with his croquet series, women—commanding and dignified if not always of the fashionable class—served as Homer’s most consistent subjects in the first half of his career. The languid young ladies of Croquet Match, compelling yet inaccessible and inscrutable, anticipate many such figures in Homer’s later paintings.

Inaugural Exhibition, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 7–February 27, 1915, no. 1915 (as The Veranda).

Century Loan Exhibition as a Memorial to Winslow Homer, Prouts Neck Association, Prouts Neck, Maine, 1936, no. 67.

Winslow Homer 1836–1910, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1936, no. 6.

Winslow Homer Centenary Exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, January 28–March 7, 1937, no. 4.

Art in Our Times: An Exhibition to Celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, May 10–September 30, 1939, no. 36.

Winslow Homer: Illustrator, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, February 1951; Lawrence Art Gallery, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, March, 1951. [exh. cat.]

Off for the Holidays, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, April 14–June 6, 1955, no. 63.

Artists in the White Mountains, Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, 1955, no. 17.

Winslow Homer: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., November 23, 1958–January 4, 1959; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, January 29–March 8, 1959, no. 14. [exh. cat.]

A Gallery Collects, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, New York, October 19–November 19, 1977, no. 38.

American Genre Painting in the Victorian Era, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, New York, April 8–May 6, 1978, no. 29. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer: Croquet Game, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, April 18–June 24, 1984; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., July 14–September 16, 1984; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, September 29–November 25, 1984; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, December 8, 1984–February 3, 1985; National Academy of Design, New York, New York, March 7–May 5, 1985. [exh. cat.]

Selections from the Permanent Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, July 19–September 14, 1985.

A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 21–June 21, 1987. [exh. cat.]

An American Revelation: The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 28–October 1, 1988.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1989.

Sport in Art from American Museums-The Director's Choice, The National Art Museum of Sport, Indianapolis, Indiana (organizer). Venues: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., September 21–December 8, 1991; IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York, New York, January 14–March 28, 1992. [exh. cat.]

Regard sur Winslow Homer (Winslow Homer at a Glance), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 1995.

Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820–1920 (The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001. [exh. cat.]

American Classics: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 26–September 1, 2002.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 2002.

A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2002–February 16, 2003.

American Classics from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 14–June 15, 2003.

American Classics, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 2003–February 8, 2004.

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004.

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Creative Art I (November 1927). Ill. p. xxvi (as Croquet).

Bolton, Theodore. "The Art of Winslow Homer: An Estimate in 1932." The Fine Arts 18 (February 1932). Pl. 24 (as The Croquet Match (1872) [sic] as seen from the porch of a Summer Hotel).

Devrel, Howard. "Homage to Homer." The New York Times (February 1, 1959).

Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer. New York, G. Braziller, 1959. Pl. 12.

Latham, David. "Winslow Homer in the Mountains." Appalachia 32 (June 15, 1966). Ill. p. 79.

Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Praeger, 1969. Text pp. 173–74; ill. 10-9, p. 172 (black & white).

A Gallery Collects. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., 1977. Text no. 38; ill. no. 38 (color).

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Curry, David Park. Winslow Homer: The Croquet Game. (exh. cat. Yale University Art Gallery). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Art Gallery, 1984. Fig. 40 (color).

"Ein Hort fur amerikanische Malerei." Kunst, Kultur & TV. (August 23, 1987): Sektion 4. Ill. cover (color).

Atkinson, D. Scott et al. A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art. Edited by Terry A. Neff. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987. Text p. 157; pl. T-48, p. 157 (color).

Croquet Match, Winslow Homer. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 1989. Ill. (black & white).

Jennings, Kate F. Winslow Homer. Greenwich, Connecticut: Brompton Books Corporation, 1990. Ill. pp. 26–27 (color).

Rhodes, Reilly, ed. Sport in America from American Museums. (exh. cat., The National Art Museum of Sport). Indianapolis, Indiana: The National Art Museum of Sport, 1990. Text p. 47; ill. p. 46 (color).

Berkow, Ira. "When Athletes are the Stuff of Art." The New York Times (February 7, 1992): B1, B6. Ill. p. B1.

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 26; fig. 11, p. 27 (black and white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 26; fig. 11, p. 27 (black and white).

Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting 1825-1875, rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Ill. no. 121, p. 242 (black and white credited as "Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York").

Wilson, Claire. "Winslow Homer at Giverny." France Magazine 35 (Summer 1995). Ill. p. 8.

Regard sur cinq années d'expositions (Five years of Exhibitions at a Glance). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1997. Text pp. 89–90; ill. p. 88 (color).

Kushner, Marilyn, Barbara Gallati and Linda S. Ferber. Winslow Homer: Illustrating America. (exh. cat., The Brooklyn Museum of Art). New York: The Brooklyn Museum of Art in association with George Braziller, Inc., 2000. Text p. 12; fig. 2, p. 13 (black & white).

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Hofelt, Miranda. Croquet Match, Winslow Homer. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 2002. Ill. (color).

Novak, Barbara. American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience, 3rd ed. New York: Praeger, 2007. Text p. 144; ill. 10.4, p. 145 (black & white).

Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting 1825-1875, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Text p. 209; ill. no. 10.7, p. 209 (black and white).