Speaking & Events

William R. Cross is available for book readings and speaking engagements. Contact him to learn more.

Contact the Author

(New Events Posted Regularly!)

November 5 / Sharon Country Club, Sharon, CT (Private)

November 17 / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (Public)

January 10 / Colony Club, New York (Private)

January 12 / Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA (Public)

January 25 / University Club, New York (Private)

February 1 / The Boston Athenaeum (Public)

February 15 / St. Botolph Club, Boston (Private)

February 22 / Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (Public)

March 1 / Cleveland Museum of Art (Public)

March 15 / Union Club, Boston (Private)

April 18 / Detroit Institute of Arts (Public)

May 4 / Women’s Athletic Club, Chicago (Private)

Connect

Little praised at its first viewing in 1865, this

Little praised at its first viewing in 1865, this picture is now an American icon of memory, loss, work, and resilience. As Homer’s model rhythmically wields his scythe, he invites each of us into his unseen heart and mind. The composition is simple; only the discarded canteen and jacket suggest that this harvester of wheat was once a soldier. Viewers easily recalled Isaiah 2:4:

“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Four years later in a complex illustration Homer reflected on the entire decade marked by the Civil War. He places the center of his “Wheel of Time” not at its chronological midpoint—1865—but on its pivot: the first day of 1863, at the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Around that pivot, three of Homer’s four scenes are battles. But the fourth turns from war to peace, with a background view of the surrender at Appomattox in the distance. In the middle ground, two veterans of the war, still wearing their forage caps, swing scythes more purposefully than does Father Time beneath them. They beat their swords into plowshares. Like his veteran in the new field, these men now coax food from soil upon which, and for which, they may themselves have fought. In the foreground, children offer hope. Homer depicts a schoolteacher leading a multiracial class including one student who has written Homer’s name lightly and below the alphabet. Homer inscribed behind Father Time a hopeful line from Tennyson:

“Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.”

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), “The Veteran in a New Field,” 1865, oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 38 1/8 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, 67.187.131.

After Winslow Homer (1836-1910), “1860-1870,” wood engraving from "Harper's Weekly", January 8, 1870, p.24-25,” 16 x 21 5/8 in., National Gallery of Art, 1986.31.267.

#winslowhomer
#ngadc
#metmuseum
#americanart
#americanartist

A back-to-school shout-out to all teachers! Young

A back-to-school shout-out to all teachers! Young women educators were a favorite subject of Winslow Homer’s.

Here, he places his model in silhouette before a blackboard with geometric shapes marked on it in chalk. The pointer in her hand is positioned to point down precisely to the center of the drawing just below the woman’s right elbow. As he did so often, Homer deploys the golden ratio in the composition, here for the blackboard itself, which he signs and dates.

The watercolor is a sly homage to Vitruvius, Alberti, and his other forebears. And the gray-green colors dominating the watercolor are a perfect complement to the flesh tones of the schoolteacher serving as his model. Her impenetrable demeanor, like her headband with its moonlike bow, gently evokes the elusive Diana, goddess of boundaries.

It’s a great time of year to salute all teachers. May they encourage with gentle firmness. May their students learn this year to develop their own ability to discover truth amid doubt, and hopeful joy even in the face of perplexity.

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), “Blackboard,” 1877, watercolor on wove paper, 19 ¾ x 12 ¾ in, National Gallery of Art, 1990.60.1.

#watercolor
#winslowhomer
#ngadc
#americanart
#americanartist
#teachers
#teachersfollowteachers
#teachersofinstagram
#teacher

“Life without art is like food without taste.”

“Life without art is like food without taste.” *

Art, like food, is essential – so take SPICE! Here are five painter’s resources to learn by heart. If you do, you will make more meaning from the art you encounter and make more meaning from any art you make.

They are:

+ Subject, which in the Adirondacks for Winslow Homer was often the men who worked within nature, and therefore the complexities and ambiguities endemic to their lives. Two favorites were an older bearded guide and a local farm laborer, the twenty-year old Michael Francis Flynn.

+ Composition. Homer was daring in his application of lessons from his study of Japanese prints. On the back of this drawing with its fallen tree cast in a dramatic diagonal, and its dog whose eagerness and extended tongue promise menace for its prey, Homer wrote “This is not bad.”

+ Light is a third. His close observation of the ever-changing weather led him to exuberant cloud studies, like this one that retains the foundation of contrasting light and dark which illuminates the force of nature – but sets tender wispy rose clouds in the midst of the sky.

+ Color. Homer took great interest in advances in science, and followed closely both the color studies of a French industrial chemist and those of a Columbia University physicist, Ogden Rood, who advocated for discrete use of complementary colors. Homer enlivened a predominantly blue and green landscape with a touch of red, orange and yellow on the lumberjack’s shirt.

+ Technique is the fifth and final resource. Homer deployed a broad range of methods to achieve his aesthetic and commercial goals. In one case, for example, he dragged his brush across his dry and nearly completed sheet to conjure from the underlying paper tiny white dots that together create a reflection of pond water on the boat’s hull.

“This will do the business,” Homer inscribed on the back of one of his watercolors. Like anyone in business he marshalled the resources at his disposal. And so can you.

* Contemporary artist Khaled Barakeh

#watercolor
#makingmeaning
#winslowhomer
#mfaboston
#domaatbsu
#artinstitutechi
#ngadc
#risdmuseum
#americanart
#americanartist

Why do so many call Winslow Homer their favorite p

Why do so many call Winslow Homer their favorite painter? Usually, it’s because of his marine works. But among his favorite spots was one far from salt spray, amid the Adirondack peaks of upstate New York. He started going to The Clearing when it was a farm, and journeyed there 21 times over 40 years, mostly after it became an unpretentious club of 5,000 acres. Ponds, lakes and streams cover one-fifth of it, or 1,000 acres, so it is ideal for trout fishing, which was a passion for Homer.

Homer’s spirits were at a low ebb when he came in 1889. But that visit was a turning point, in which he found his way again. In the rhythms of nature, he saw evidence that the words of his favorite author, an Anglo-Scots physician, were true:

“Every thing bears the mark of order impressed upon it by the Almighty hand.”

Homer’s newfound delight in God’s created world, within which he immersed himself, was as tangible as the creatures he painted. Homer saw, in awe, the working out of an invisible but benevolent design.

The trout have sprung from the rippled, nurturing shallows for a brief moment, as has their prey – which is in this form for just 24 hours. Homer catches all of it, in mysteriously ordered balance: the fish, the bug, the lily pads, and the air he, too, breathes. He relishes the suspense of the moment, and its extreme brevity for the three characters in his drama.

He poured his sense of wonder in another sheet on which, as one critic wrote, Homer “commands action, as well as color . . . a hound which leaps upon a log lying in the water, and stands there, its feet close together to keep its balance, hesitating before taking to the water.”

And in many of these watercolors, Homer conveys the peace he himself found upon the pond at twilight – inspiring all of us to discover it too.

By Winslow Homer (1836-1910), watercolors on wove paper, 1889:

“Leaping Trout,” 14 x 20 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 99.24.

“Dog on a Log,” 14 x 20 in., Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, 1946.120.

“Adirondack Lake,” 14 x 20 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 23.215.

#winslowhomer
#mfaboston
#addisongalleryofamericanart
#americanart

Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer shared more than t

Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer shared more than their similar names. Each of these great painters:

- Grew up on a river near a big Northeastern city;
- Often painted the sea;
- Was raised by a mother who encouraged him, and painted;
- Was a virtuoso in oil and watercolor;
- For 20 years prospered through illustration;
- Composed his pictures tightly, framing out inessential elements;
- Deployed geometrical building blocks in them;
- Closely observed his social context; and
- Lived on Washington Square in Greenwich Village.

Of course, they had their differences too. See the superb exhibition at CAM to learn more. Which painter fits with which fact (answers at the bottom – don’t peek!)?

1. Was described as studying “his figures from realities, in the sunshine. If you wish to see him work you must go out upon the roof, and find him painting what he sees.”
2. Is quoted to have said that “all I ever wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.”
3. Except in Cuba, rarely depicted buildings.
4. Never went to Monhegan Island, Maine.
5. Never owned a camera.
6. Lived extensively on Cape Cod.
7. Was technically experimental, even occasionally mixing gold leaf into his watercolor paint.
8. Married for the first time just before his 42nd birthday.

By Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910):

“Tall Masts,” 1912. Oil on canvas, 24 ¼ x 29 ¼ in., Whitney Museum of American Art, 70.1198.

“Coasters at Anchor,” 1880. Watercolor, 9 ¾ x 13 5/8 in., Private Collection courtesy of Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

“Portuguese Church,” 1923. Watercolor over black chalk and pencil on ivory wove paper, 13 7/8 x 20 in., Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 94.026.001.

“Spanish Club, Santiago de Cuba,” 1885, Watercolor on wove paper, 14 x 20 in., Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

“Trawler,” 1923-24. Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, 13 15/16 x 19 15/16 in., Whitney Museum, 70.1092.

“Marine,” 1881. Watercolor, 9 ¾ x 13 ½ in., Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1933.1.

Answers:
1: Win;
2: Ed;
3: Win;
4: Win;
5: Ed;
6: Ed;
7: Win;
8: Ed.

#winslowhomer
#edwardhopper
#whitneymuseum
#peabodyessex
#bowdoinmuseum
#capeannmuseum
#american

Often called a curmudgeon, Winslow Homer was far f

Often called a curmudgeon, Winslow Homer was far from it. Look at his work and you will spot unusual empathy with children. Other painters also depicted boys and girls, but Homer’s kids differ in several ways. John George Brown’s pictures of children were much admired when new, but appeal less to us today. Why?

Here are three possible reasons:

Technique. Critics and patrons complained of Homer’s “sketchiness” but the more highly finished character of his peers’ pictures means that they pull in our eyes less than Homer’s works. His manner demands more of his viewers – and we respond.

Subject. Homer places his models in an environment. The pictures aren’t just about them, but about what it’s like to inhabit their worlds. One way he does that is by withholding facial details. His children become universal, with a sense of agency. As a painter who began in illustration, he never lost his instinct for implicit narrative.

Composition. Homer often used a conventional system of bands (wide sky at top, wide ground at bottom, action squeezed in between) but also delighted in messing around with it. Just try to find the horizon in his watercolor with the well-lit rake! And he invoked a sense of harmonic order in the geometric puzzle-pieces of his watercolors and oil paintings. He balanced his tropical watercolor so perfectly on the tip of his model’s right thumb that we accept it unconsciously, and simply give thanks for Homer’s immersive generosity.

By Winslow Homer (1836-1910):

“The Berry Pickers,” 1873. Watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper, 9 5/8 x 13 ¾ in., National Gallery of Art, 2014.18.16.

“Girl with Hay Rake,” 1878. Watercolor on wove paper, 6 15/16 x 8 7/16 in., National Gallery of Art, 1975.92.17.

“Gloucester Harbor and Dory,” 1880. Watercolor and white gouache over graphite on heavy white wove paper, 13 11/16 x 19 5/8 in., Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum 1939.240.

“Under the Coco Palm,” 1898, Transparent and opaque watercolor and graphite on white wove paper, 14 15/16 x 21 3/16 in., Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum 1920.29.

#winslowhomer
#harvardartmuseums
#ngadc
#americanart
#americanartist
#empathy

Does human presence tarnish our experience of natu

Does human presence tarnish our experience of natural beauty or enhance it? Winslow Homer saw himself in his dramatic seascapes, and often left traces of other people too. Look hard or you might miss them!

Over each of the last twenty-seven years of his life, he lived most of the year on the rocky promontory of Prouts Neck, a dozen miles from Portland, Maine. It was a busy place in the summer, with six hotels and boarding houses spilling hundreds of guests onto the neck’s 150 acres. But by the fall, it emptied out, and Homer had plenty of time to observe his surroundings – in all weather.

Some have suggested that he was a misanthrope, and that his favorite view was of “pure nature.” I don’t agree. I think he found beauty and meaning in the relationship between nature and those of us – including himself – who interact with it.

Here are four paintings. Which human mark goes with which painting?

a) A glow atop a manned lighthouse;
b) Footprints in the snow;
c) Lights from distant houses;
d) A fishing boat steaming by; and even
e) A tiny figure, who is looking out at sea, just like us.

And then let me know in the comments whether you admire Homer's paintings – and him – more or less because he painted “impure nature,” and considered it worthy of his attention.

A warning: for a couple of these you might need a higher resolution photo, since some of his marks are very small. The museums that own them have excellent images on their sites.

By Winslow Homer (1836-1910):

“Coast in Winter,” 1892. Oil on canvas, 28 ½ x 48 1/4, Worcester Art Museum 1940.60.

“Sunlight on the Coast,” 1890. Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 48 1/2, Toledo Museum of Art 1912.507.

“Moonlight, Wood Island Light,” 1894. Oil on canvas, 30 3/4 x 40 1/4, Metropolitan Museum of Art 11.116.2.

“West Point, Prout’s Neck,” 1900, Oil on canvas, 30 1/16 x 48 1/8, Clark Art Institute, 1955.7.

#winslowhomer
#worcesterartmuseum
#metmuseum
#clarkart
#toledomuseum
#americanart
#americanartist
#mainecoast
#moonlight
#toledomuseumofart
#americanartists
#clarkartinstitute
#proutsneck
#purenature
#americanpainting

Where is this rooster? The landscape in which he s

Where is this rooster? The landscape in which he struts, including the little red house, meant a lot to Winslow Homer, who painted this watercolor four years after first visiting his painter friend George Henry Hall.

Homer spent chunks of the summers of 1871 and 1872 at Hall’s red cottage in Palenville, New York. The house was located at a picturesque turn in the Catskills creek upon which it sat near the foot of steep hills. Hall made his living mostly by selling obsessively detailed still-life paintings of fruit and flowers. But like Homer he empathized with the poor around him in Manhattan and on his travels, and made a point of showing it in a few of his pictures.

Homer’s rooster has more personality than the scarecrow-like lady on the right. Does the schoolhouse behind her remind you of the one in Homer’s iconic “Snap the Whip”? Don’t the two boys in “Crossing the Pasture” look they are pretty close by?

Homer’s friend Hall kept a sketchbook in which he drew the area around his house, perhaps while Homer was staying with him. His inscription “Palenville, September 5, 1871” pins down the location of all these pictures pretty well. But as is so often the case with Homer, the differences between his pictures are as interesting as the commonalities. Do you hear any roosters?

By Winslow Homer (1836-1910):

“Rooster,” 1875. Watercolor and pencil on wove paper, 7 7/16 x 13 3/16 in., Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA 1949.24.

“Snap the Whip,” 1872, Oil on canvas, 22 x 36 in., Butler Institute of American Art, 1939-7-9.

“Crossing the Pasture,” 1871-72, Oil on canvas, 26 ¼ x 38 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 1976.37.

and

by George Henry Hall (1825-1913):

“Palenville, September 5, 1871” in his sketchbook, p. 63, Brooklyn Museum, 16.758.1.

#winslowhomer
#butlerartmuseum
#addisongalleryofamericanart
#theamoncarter
#brooklynmuseum
#americanart
#americanartist
#palenville
#palenvilleny

Follow on Instagram

Connect on Facebook

News & Events Sign Up