Weary

The subject of Winslow Homer’s Weary is a solitary girl, gazing into the left distance as she leans against a tree trunk in a light-dappled sylvan setting. The angle of a slender stick in her hand, a thin line of bright white, subtly counterbalances the leftward inclination of her body and the tree trunk that complements it. The girl’s watchful gaze and stick suggest that she is a shepherdess, an occupation of enforced idleness, the monotonous character of which is underscored by Homer’s title. Devoid of sheep, Weary eschews any suggestion of narrative, however, focusing instead on the purely visual interest of the play of light over the figure and setting and the suggestion of atmosphere in the slight stirring of her sunbonnet and long skirt in a gentle breeze.

Along with the Terra Foundation’s Apple Picking (TF 1992.7), Weary belongs in a group of watercolors that Homer painted in the summer of 1878 at Houghton Farm, the property of his devoted patron and friend Lawson Valentine, at Mountainville, in New York’s Hudson River Valley. This watercolor was purchased from the artist by Valentine, whose own daughters were among Homer’s youthful local models. The artist often posed them as rustic shepherdesses, either in ordinary country clothes or in a “Bo-Peep” costume, of which the gathered, flounced skirt appears in Weary. The shepherdess theme and archaic costume, associated with eighteenth-century imagery of rustic love, were again in fashion in the 1870s. Homer’s works only hint at such bucolic associations, however; his shepherdesses, even when accompanied by boys, are, like the girl in Weary, commanding in their watchful self-possession. They recall the fashionable young ladies of Homer’s paintings of croquet matches from the mid-1860s, such as the Terra Foundation’s Croquet Match (TF 1999.72), but become heroic and somewhat inaccessible women in the artist's work of the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Homer’s focus on children in his Houghton Farm watercolors belongs to a larger trend in American art in the wake of the Civil War. Children, especially in rural surroundings, were celebrated in art and literature both as symbols of the nation’s regeneration and as vehicles for nostalgia for vanishing youth and lost innocence. Boys and girls are recurring motifs in Homer’s paintings of the 1870s, especially in his watercolors. The medium, which was gaining popularity among American artists, allowed Homer to paint outdoors and to work rapidly to capture the transient effects of light, the suggestion of atmosphere, and the natural expressions assumed by his child models as they posed according to his direction.

Homer showed his Houghton Farm watercolors in the American Water Color Society’s annual exhibition in New York City in the winter of 1879. Justly acknowledging them as a turning point in the artist’s watercolor painting, critics praised their freshness and the evident freedom with which they were painted. Weary demonstrates the sureness of Homer’s rapid application of the medium. He laid down the watercolor in thin washes for the sunlit areas, so that the white of the paper becomes a source of tinted light that peeps through darker color applied in small patches or brushed dryly over the textured surface of the paper.

Exhibition, American Watercolor Society, 1879 (as Watching Sheep).

Brooklyn Academy of Science, New York, 1913

Watercolors by Winslow Homer, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, October 16–November 7, 1915, no. 29 (as Weary, Houghton Farm).

Watercolors by Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, Carnegie Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 1–27, 1917; Cleveland; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, January 1918; Minneapolis; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late 1917–April 30, 1918, The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, May 5–?, 1918; The Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York, June 1918, no. 3. [exh. cat.]

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; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, March 1959. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer in New York State, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, June 29–August 22, 1963, no. 41. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer, The Katonah Gallery, Katonah, New York, September 8–October 15, 1963, no. 3.

Five American Masters of Watercolor, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, May 5–July 12, 1981. [exh. cat.]

Solitude: Inner Visions in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, September 25–December 30, 1982. [exh. cat.]

Woman, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, February 21–April 22, 1984. [exh. cat.]

Nineteenth Century Genre Painting from The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois, November 15, 1985–January 12, 1986.

Winslow Homer Watercolors, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venues: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March 2–May 11, 1986; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, June 6–July 27, 1986; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, September 11–November 2, 1986. [exh. cat.]

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

Selections from the Permanent Collection: Americans at Home and Abroad, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 6–29, 1987.

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.

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–September 24, 1995.

Winslow Homer Retrospective, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venues: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 15, 1995–January 28, 1996; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, February 21–May 26, 1996; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, June 17–September 22, 1996. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (organizer). Venue: High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, October 6, 2001–January 6, 2002. [exh. cat.]

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.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 2004.

Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, February 16–May 11, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Bulletin, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (October 30, 1915). Ill. p. 161.

Brooklyn Museum Quarterly 2 (October 1915). Ill. p. 368.

Art and Progress 7 (December 1915): 71. Ill. p. 71.

McLanathan, Richard B. K. The American Tradition in the Arts. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. Text pp. 333–38.

Gardner, Albert Ten Eyck. Winslow Homer: A Retrospective Exhibition. (exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Boston, Massachusetts: Museum of Fine Arts, 1959. Ill. p. 50.

Goodrich, Lloyd. Winslow Homer in New York State. (exh. cat., Storm King Art Center). Mountainville, New York: Storm King Art Center, 1963. Cat. no. 41; ill. p. 15.

Schulze, Franz. "Terra Incognita: A New Museum of American Art." Art News 79:10 (December 1980): 84–87. Ill. p. 87 (color).

Five American Masters of Watercolors. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Evanston, Illinois: Terra Museum of American Art, 1981. Ill. p. 5 (color).

Elliot, David. "Watercolor: 'Gentle Sex' of Paint in Knowing Hands." Chicago Sun-Times (May 24, 1981): 22–23. Ill. p. 22 (black & white).

Sokol, David M. Solitude. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Evanston, Illinois: Terra Museum of American Art, 1982. Text p. 5; ill. no. 9, p. 7 (black & white).

Nochlin, Linda. Woman. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Evanston, Illinois: Terra Museum of American Art, 1984. Text p. 9; ill. no. 12, p. 18 (color).

Cooper, Helen A. Winslow Homer Watercolors. (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1986. Text pp. 61, 246 (checklist); fig. 46, p. 63 (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. Pl. T-50, p. 159 (color).

Winslow Homer in Gloucester. (exh. cat. Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Museum of American Art, 1990. Text p. 32; fig. 19, p. 33 (black & white).

Wilmerding, John and Linda Ayres. Winslow Homer in the 1870s: Selections from the Valentine-Pulsifer Collection. (exh. cat., The Art Museum, Princeton University). Princeton, New Jersey: The Art Museum, 1990. Text p. 73 (appendix).

Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai. Winslow Homer: Watercolors. Southport, Connecticut: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., 1991. Pl. 22, p. 35 (color).

Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai and Franklin Kelly. Winslow Homer. (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1995. Cat. 92, p. 162 (color).

Regard sur cinq années d'expositions (Five years of Exhibitions at a Glance). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1997. Ill. p. 90 (color).

Conrads, Margaret C. Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s. (exh. cat., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press in conjunction with The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2001. Text pp. 148, 210; fig. 109, p. 151 (color).

Larkin, Susan G. The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore. (exh. cat. National Academy of Design). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001. Text p. 138; fig. 83, p. 139 (black & white).

Unger, Miles and Arnold Skolnick. The Watercolors of Winslow Homer. Chesterfield, Massachusetts: Chameleon Books, 2001. Text pp. 45, 61; ill. p. 57 (color).

Johns, Elizabeth. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2002. Text pp. XVIII (checklist), 90–91; fig. 54, p. 90 (black & white).

Kennedy, Elizabeth. "The Terra Museum of American Art." American Art Review (December 2002): 126–41. Text p. 138; ill. p. 130 (color).

Tedeschi, Martha with Kristi Dahm. Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light. (exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2008. Text pp. 54, 62, 66, 76, 180, 207,208; ill pp. 54 fig. a & b(color detail), 55 fig. c (color).