Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American painter who began as a magazine illustrator and taught himself to become one of the country's greatest artists. Born in Boston in 1836, he first drew notice with sketches of the Civil War for Harper's Weekly, working close to the front lines. Those early scenes of soldiers, and later of freed African Americans after the war, showed the honest, unsentimental eye that would define his career.

He is best remembered for his powerful images of the sea. After settling on the coast of Maine, Homer painted crashing waves, fishermen, and small boats dwarfed by open water, capturing the raw pull between people and nature. He worked in both oil and watercolor, and many consider him one of the finest watercolorists America has produced. His later marine paintings, stripped of any fuss, still feel strikingly modern.