Three Boys on the Shore

Winslow Homer’s Three Boys on the Shore reiterates the artist’s favorite theme of childhood leisure in its presentation of three boys, turned away from the viewer, resting on a broad stone on a beach as they gaze out toward the calm horizon of the sea. The boys’ reclining bodies accommodate themselves to the smooth curve of the sun-baked rock and to the horizontal emphasis of the composition, which is divided into bands of sky, water, and land. The foreground rock, its bulging form echoed in the identical straw hats worn by the boys, crowds the bottom band, along with the resting figures and the cut-off forms of more boulders and beached dory boats. Homer’s palette, dominated by orange, pale yellow, and blue, suggests the warmth of sun and stone and the contrasting chill of the expansive water beyond.

Three Boys on the Shore is one of a number of watercolors that Homer painted in 1873 during a summer spent in the coastal fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. During that season, the artist made his first serious use of the medium, in which he would realize his greatest artistic achievements. His mother had been an amateur watercolor painter, but Homer’s new interest may have been stimulated by an important watercolor exhibition earlier in 1873 in New York City, where the artist maintained a studio. Long dismissed as a medium for amateurs, watercolor had recently begun to attract serious attention: not only portable and quickly finished, watercolor paintings lent themselves to the new vogue for painting outdoors, in natural light, rather than in the studio. Homer made the most of this advantage, rapidly applying the fluid color over pencil sketches to simulate the flattening effects of brilliant sunlight and sharply defined shadows. Although critics remarked on the lack of finish of Homer’s early watercolors, such an apparent shortcoming was considered acceptable in the inherently more casual medium.

Homer’s summer in Gloucester also saw him take a definite turn in another direction, toward the theme of innocent childhood in quintessentially American rural and coastal locations. For the remainder of the decade, children dominated his work in both oil and watercolor, and later, in the mid-1880s, he returned to the subject in watercolors he painted in the tropics, such as the Terra Foundation’s A Garden in Nassau (TF 1994.10). Homer’s many images of rural children working or, more commonly at leisure, recall his own bucolic childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They also reflect the popularity of images of children in art and literature at the time, when rural childhood symbolized national regeneration and the reclamation of an innocent past. While most of Homer’s contemporaries pictured children sentimentally, from an adult’s point of view, he presented youthful experience from a child’s perspective. In Three Boys on the Shore, the boys seem to exist in a self-sufficient world, innocent of adult cares and independent of adults themselves. Homer’s typical children are static and observing: the boys in this watercolor enjoy the leisurely idleness of childhood, but they also seem to watch and wait, gazing out to sea as if anticipating the trials to come in maturity.

Homer and the Sea, The Mariners Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, September 27–October 19, 1964; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, October 30–November 29, 1964.

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Winslow Homer, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (organizer). Venues: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, April 3–June 3, 1973; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, July 3–August 15, 1973; The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, September 8–October 21, 1973. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer and the New England Coast, Whitney Museum of American Art, Fairfield County, Stamford, Connecticut, November 9, 1984–January 9, 1985. [exh. cat.]

Nineteenth Century Genre Painting from The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Evanston, Illinois (organizer). Venue: 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.]

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.

Winslow Homer in Gloucester, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 20–December 30, 1990. [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.

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Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

Winslow Homer: Poet of the Sea," Dulwich Picture Gallery, London England, Musée d'Art Américain Givery, Giverny, France and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, England, February 22–May 21, 2006; Musée d' Art Américain Giverny, Giverny, France, June 18–September 24, 2006. [exh. cat.]

Homer on the Beach , Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts (organizer). Venue: Cape Ann Museum, August 3–December 1, 2019 [exh. cat.]

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