The exhibition, Winslow Homer: Making Art Making History is currently on display at The Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, MA through September 8th. It features more than 200 works by Homer - spanning his career and including paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, lithographs, chromolithographs,wood engravings, photographs, correspondence, and books.
Homer began his career as an illustrator for the popular press, providing pictures of current events for newspapers in Boston and New York. Historians use these, as well as his paintings and watercolors, to illustrate mid-nineteenth-century
political and economic developments. Art historians, too, use the works to explore not only Homer’s life and endeavors, but also to consider broader questions such as the rise of the critical press, the quest for a national style, and the ramifications of the expanding nineteenth-century art market.
Michael Cassin - the Director for The Clark’s Center for Education in the Visual Arts - takes us on an audio tour of the exhibition.