Masterpiece: Aiming for Intimacy---In Winslow Homer’s ‘The Army of the Potomac—A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty,’ the artist, as newsman, makes us silent witnesses, Brian Allem, The Wall Street Journal, April 9-10, 2016, Section C, page 20,
We are in the tree with the soldier, complicit with the violence that is about to occur.
Photo:
Davis Museum at Wellesley College / Art Resource, NY. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was one of America’s great painters but
also a great illustrator. “The Army of the Potomac—A Sharp-Shooter on
Picket Duty” appeared on the cover of Harper’s Weekly on Nov. 15, 1862,
as part of a series of illustrations depicting the everyday lives of
Union soldiers. Homer was only 26 years old, without formal training,
moving from Boston jobs illustrating local magazines, sheet music and
business ads to a career in New York supplying art to America’s leading
news and lifestyle magazine. magazine. Known by its abbreviated title, “The
Sharpshooter” is a work of masterly economy, conveying a moment of
ruthlessness and randomness. It has little if any precedent in American
art. It brilliantly aligns message—someone is about to kill and someone
is about to die—and medium, a publication whose storytelling needs to
grip the reader quickly and tightly. Mid-19th-century newspapers
and magazines almost never used color illustrations. The technology was
too primitive, leaving artists like Homer the task of orchestrating
images and story lines using lights, darks and half tones. Homer worked
for 20 years as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. By the early 1870s,
he was one of the country’s most famous illustrators. Until then, his
career as a painter was sporadic. As an illustrator before periodicals
showed photographs, Homer was a precursor to the great newspaper
photographers or the cameramen who accompany television or Internet
reporters. He was a newsman. Much of Homer’s work portrays events
occurring in an instant—a gust of wind, say, unsettling big things like
land or sea, or small things like a lady’s dress on a stormy day. In
the case of our sharpshooter, we see the moment he is about to pull the
trigger.
Sharpshooters were uncommon in America until the Civil War, when they became useful but reviled in both the Union and Confederate armies. Sharpshooters drained the valor from war. Often hidden in trees, they stalked their victims and reduced them to hunted animals. With sharpshooters in the neighborhood, no one felt safe. When captured, they were usually treated as murderers and immediately executed.
Homer zooms in telescope-style, eliminating clutter to give us just the facts. His sharpshooter is big, his foot sticking in our space. We are in the tree with him—uncomfortably complicit and silent witnesses. Diagonals lead from the sharpshooter’s feet, up his legs and arms, to his hand. We can get there quickly, as it’s the whitest, brightest passage. Graphically, the hand’s simple palette and contours focus us, as does the sharpshooter’s bright, beady eye. The image is about killing but also about looking, finding and stalking. To emphasize the point, the canteen hanging near the soldier suggests a target.
The Civil War figured hugely in American illustration, much of it concerning battlefield heroics, deathbed scenes, the romance of separated lovers, or homecomings. Homer’s Civil War work treats different subjects: the indiscriminate violence of war, the confusion of battle, and the boredom of camp life.
In 1863, Homer finished a small painted version, now owned by the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, that closely follows the Harper’s illustration. Its jewel-box size suggests a preciousness that seems at variance with the violence at hand, yet its scale promotes a sense of intimacy. The subject works better in black and white and on the printed page. Paint and color soften the narrative. To convey ruthlessness, a simple palette and the graphic line work best.
“The Sharpshooter” likely began as a drawing and was then produced as a wood engraving suitable to mechanical mass-production. Since the print was so widely produced, most museums own it. It is often displayed in Civil War anniversary shows. And, as the 2014 film “American Sniper” demonstrates, this particular practice of war still exists and still fascinates.
Death
often appears in Homer’s work. In the dramatic rescue pictures from the
mid-1880s, where women are pulled from the sea, we don’t know whether
they are dead or alive. Homer’s hunting scenes from the 1880s and 1890s
are about stalking.
One of Homer’s last pictures is “Right and Left” (1909), in the National Gallery. Two ducks fly above the ocean. The blast and smoke from a faraway hunter’s gun signal the moment when one bird has just died, its neck collapsed as it plummets toward the water. The other convulses, its eye wide as a plate. It’s the moment of death. “The Sharpshooter” and “Right and Left”—almost 50 years apart—are as condensed, as moving, and as powerful as the best of news stories.
Sharpshooters were uncommon in America until the Civil War, when they became useful but reviled in both the Union and Confederate armies. Sharpshooters drained the valor from war. Often hidden in trees, they stalked their victims and reduced them to hunted animals. With sharpshooters in the neighborhood, no one felt safe. When captured, they were usually treated as murderers and immediately executed.
Homer zooms in telescope-style, eliminating clutter to give us just the facts. His sharpshooter is big, his foot sticking in our space. We are in the tree with him—uncomfortably complicit and silent witnesses. Diagonals lead from the sharpshooter’s feet, up his legs and arms, to his hand. We can get there quickly, as it’s the whitest, brightest passage. Graphically, the hand’s simple palette and contours focus us, as does the sharpshooter’s bright, beady eye. The image is about killing but also about looking, finding and stalking. To emphasize the point, the canteen hanging near the soldier suggests a target.
The Civil War figured hugely in American illustration, much of it concerning battlefield heroics, deathbed scenes, the romance of separated lovers, or homecomings. Homer’s Civil War work treats different subjects: the indiscriminate violence of war, the confusion of battle, and the boredom of camp life.
In 1863, Homer finished a small painted version, now owned by the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, that closely follows the Harper’s illustration. Its jewel-box size suggests a preciousness that seems at variance with the violence at hand, yet its scale promotes a sense of intimacy. The subject works better in black and white and on the printed page. Paint and color soften the narrative. To convey ruthlessness, a simple palette and the graphic line work best.
“The Sharpshooter” likely began as a drawing and was then produced as a wood engraving suitable to mechanical mass-production. Since the print was so widely produced, most museums own it. It is often displayed in Civil War anniversary shows. And, as the 2014 film “American Sniper” demonstrates, this particular practice of war still exists and still fascinates.
Advertisement
One of Homer’s last pictures is “Right and Left” (1909), in the National Gallery. Two ducks fly above the ocean. The blast and smoke from a faraway hunter’s gun signal the moment when one bird has just died, its neck collapsed as it plummets toward the water. The other convulses, its eye wide as a plate. It’s the moment of death. “The Sharpshooter” and “Right and Left”—almost 50 years apart—are as condensed, as moving, and as powerful as the best of news stories.
—Mr.
Allen was the director of the museum division at the New-York
Historical Society, the director of the Addison Gallery of American Art,
and the curator of American art at the Clark Art Institute. He lives in
East Arlington, Vt.
Full Text Source: The Wall Street Journal, April 9-10, 2016.
