Related

The Blue Boat

A boy leads a girl by her hand across three wooden steps that allow for passage over a fence in this horizontal watercolor. The fence spans the width of the paper, but angles slightly away from us as it moves off to our left. The fence is made up of four widely spaced horizontal rails across vertical posts. The boy and girl face away from us but have pale or tanned skin and brown hair. The girl is on our side of the fence, her front foot on the top step. She wears a long white dress edged with ruffles and shaded with slate blue. Her hair is tied with a blue ribbon, and another ribbon flies from the back of her straw-colored hat. The boy begins to step down on the far side of the fence. He wears tan overalls, a gray shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. The ankle we can see is bare. A tree branch with dark green leaves dips down into the scene from the upper right corner. A wash of dark green on the far side of the fence suggests a shrub in an otherwise flat field of fresh, celery green. The top rail of the fence overlaps the horizon, where a light blue hill rises to fill much of the upper half of the composition. A narrow wedge of cream-white sky angles into our view at the top left. The artist signed the lower right corner, “HOMER.”

This painting shows a person in a small boat on a body of water. The person is all the way on one end of the boat, leaning towards the right and reaching out over the side of the boat, holding a rope that appears to be tied to the white antlers of a large brown deer that is almost completely submerged in the water. A black-and-white dog swims in the water behind the deer. The person has pale skin and short brown hair, and they are wearing a black hat and a gray coat. The boat is gray-brown, and the water below is painted with lines of blue, white, green, and teal. The background is a mix of dark gray and olive green.

This painting shows a person fishing in a small blue-gray boat, situated to the left of center. The individual's back is to us, and they hold a fishing rod that extends from the center of the painting into the water on the far right. The person is wearing a tan shirt, tan pants with a brown belt, and a wide-brimmed tan hat. There are thick, dark green and blue trees in the background; the water reflects dark greens and blues, as well as shades of tan and white from the boat and person. The brushstrokes are loose, and different colors of paint blend softly with one another.

Sloop, Nassau

Boys in a Dory

Charcoal-gray clouds fill most of the sky over a turquoise-blue body of water in this horizontal watercolor painting. The gray clouds on the left become more blue as they move to the right. The water is framed by low hills sloping down from both sides, which are painted in cinnamon and dark brown with touches of forest green and topped with a few slender, windblown trees. Several black rocks form a curve along the lower right side of a cove directly in front of us. Loose strokes of brown, tan, and pale blue fill the lower right corner below them. On the horizon, at the center of the composition, is a dark gray finger of land with a tiny steamship drifting by, smoke rising from its two smokestacks. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “Homer 1901.”

Spearing Eels

The Pioneer

After the Hurricane, Bahamas

This painting shows a landscape with tall palm trees and bright green ferns by a body of water. In the background is a dense, dark forest in shades of black and dark blue. Closest to us, light blue water flows horizontally across the painting. In the bottom left corner, there is a long gray canoe that appears to have a person sitting in it, wearing red and holding a long white fishing line. The color palette includes shades of green for the trees and soft blue, white, and grey for the sky. The brushstrokes in the painting are loose and expressive, allowing colors to overlap and blend together.

The Bather

Shore and Surf, Nassau

This painting shows a person in a rowboat on calm water, fishing. The boat is positioned horizontally across the painting, and the person in it faces the left, looking forward. Their left hand holds the side of the boat while the right holds a long fishing pole that is placed over their shoulder. They wear long-sleeved brown garment and a tan hat with cloth panels that cover their neck and chin. Their skin is a light red color, and they appear to have a gray mustache. In the background there are dense dark green trees, and in the upper left corner a sliver of glowing sky in shades of orange and yellow is visible. Around the boat is dark blue water, with a hint of the yellow sky reflected in the bottom left corner.

The Light House, Nassau

Boy with Anchor

We look across a coral-pink beach that curves around a royal-blue bay, under a glimmering, pale blue sky in this horizontal watercolor landscape. The area of the beach closest to us is cast under a pale, plum-purple shadow. The beach curves away from us and to the right, like a backward C. At the curve, a short distance from us, a bank of emerald-green vegetation and a scrubby, dark green tree leads back to a low, grassy hill. A pair of two-story buildings with oyster-white walls and bright white roofs perch on the spit of land opposite us, across the water. Pale pink boats are pulled up onto the beach in front of and to our left of the buildings. The buildings and the green hill reflect in the water, which laps against the sand closest to us with bands of azure blue. More loosely painted buildings line the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Two brick-red smudges to our left could be people standing at the water’s edge in the distance. The sky above has puffy white clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The artist signed the painting in the lower left, “HOMER.” In the lower right, the location and date are written in dark gray, “Salt Kettle Dec 1899.”

Fishing Boats, Key West

A buck jerks to the right as it leaps toward us, over a boulder and away from a rolling river in this horizontal watercolor painting. The buck is just right of center, and his body scissors, presumably as a gunshot lands. His curling horns nearly meet in an oval overhead, and one front leg is pulled up. The river is painted with tones of spruce green and sapphire, topaz, and celestial blue. The black silhouettes of two animals, either more deer or dogs, are in the distance to the right, and a white puff is along the far bank to the left. The forested background is painted broadly with tones of earthy green, tan, and smoky blue. The artist signed and dated the watercolor in the lower left corner, “Oct 12 1892 Homer.”

Palm Tree, Nassau

Nassau

Natural Bridge, Bermuda

An October Day

This painting shows two women walking towards the left on a gray-brown shore, dressed in white blouses and blue skirts, one wearing red stockings. They both have pale skin, and their faces are turned away from us. Their skirts are blowing in the wind, and strands of dark hair have come out of their low buns. The sea behind them is turbulent with crashing white and blue waves, under a dark gray overcast sky. The shore is dotted with small areas of green, white, and rusty red. The scene is painted in soft and fluid strokes.

This painting shows a white thatched-roof house on open, sandy ground. The brown thatched roof of the house has some yellow grass poking through. People can be seen in the open doorway of the house, identifiable by spots of red, blue, and light-yellow clothing. Behind the house is lush green tropical foliage with a few tall palm trees. A rooster is visible on the sandy ground in front of the house next to a long, white object that may be a downed tree trunk. The sky is filled with large white cumulus clouds and patches of bright blue.

A Fisherman's Daughter

The Conch Divers

This painting shows a view of a calm body of water with greenery surrounding it. Across the water appears to be a hill or shore that slopes upward to the top of the painting, painted in gray and cream tones and covered in palm-like plants in shades of green, brown, and rusty red. A similar plant is visible near the bottom right corner in a dark shade of yellow. The water in the center is painted in shades of blue with some ripples across the top. The brushstrokes are fluid.

Leaping Trout

A Clam-Bake

A white boat with sails lowered floats in an aquamarine-blue ocean under a pale, sapphire-blue sky in this horizontal watercolor painting. To our right of center, the boat floats with its right, starboard side facing us and the bow angled slightly away. The white sails bunch up under the lowered, horizontal booms just above the top of the boat. The masts and rigging extend off the top of the composition. A group of a few people are gathered in the bow, on the far side of the sails. They are painted loosely but appear to have brown skin and red or black clothing. Waves lap against the side of the boat. To our left, an island or sliver of land with three palm trees deep in the distance lines the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. The water and sky are painted with layers of pale washes. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower left corner with dark paint: “HOMER KEY WEST 1903.”

Market Scene, Nassau

Inside the Bar

Mink Lake, Adirondacks

Indian Camp, Roberval, P.Q.

The Siesta

A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.

Mount Sainte-Victoire

Taking on Wet Provisions (Schooner Marked Newport, K. W.)

Storm, Bahamas

A Basket of Clams

The Fishermen (Fantastic Scene)

Hurricane, Bahamas

Two Ladies

The Buccaneers

This is a landscape painting depicting a body of water surrounded by greenery, with tall green and purple mountains in the background under a sky full of dark pink clouds and a strip of bright blue-green. To the right of center, a person stands in the water, submerged up to their thighs. The person faces away from us. Their skin is painted in shades of light orange and tan, and they have an orange cloth wrapped around their waist. They hold a long, thin spear, and look down at the water. Behind them, on the opposite shore, another indistinct person looks on, standing on the grassy green ground. At the edge of the tall mountains is a line of green trees. The wide water reflects the green and purple of the mountains, as well as the pink of the sky.

The Garden Gate, Bahamas

On the Sands

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

From a low vantage point, we look up a steep, rocky mountainside at a towering mountain peak in the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. Painted with tones of cobalt and topaz blue, caramel and clay brown, mauve pink, lavender purple, ivory, and cream white, the rocks and mountain nearly fill this composition against a deep, crystal-blue sky dotted with a few white puffy clouds. Water trickles along the rocky ground into a white waterfall near the lower left corner. Vibrant green moss grows on some of the smaller rocks that form a diagonal line down to the lower right corner. Larger boulders are painted with denim blue and harvest yellow beyond the smaller rocks. The rocky landscape slopes dramatically up into the distance, where it meets the sheer cliff face of a back-lit monolith that nearly touches the top edge of the canvas. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially along the center for the middle distance. Light pours over the scene from the left, but some of the middle ground is cast into shadow, perhaps by unseen ridges.

Flower Garden and Bungalow, Bermuda

The Gardener

The Cliffs at Beg-ar-Fry, Saint-Jean-du-Doigt

The Bathers, Souvenir of the Banks of the Anio River at Tivoli

The painting depicts a wintry scene from an elevated point of view, showing people skating and playing games on a frozen river. On the left, leafless trees line the frozen bank. On the right, there are brown buildings with snow on their roofs and smoke rising from their chimneys. A woman stands on one of the porches, holding a small child. On the snowy ground outside the buildings, a sled is being pulled by two horses. In the center of the painting is the wide frozen river. The people on it wear colorful clothes in shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and brown. Some of them slip and fall on the ice, and others lace skates on their feet. Four men in the center hold long curved sticks and look towards a small round ball on the surface of the ice. In the distance, the horizon is marked by blue-tinged mountains under a cloudy gray sky.

“There has been none of my favorite snow," George Bellows wrote to a friend in January 1914. "I must always paint the snow at least once a year.” Soon after, a blizzard hit New York City, inspiring this painting. The bright colors and broad brushstrokes convey the pleasure and movement of the skaters and onlookers who are out enjoying a New York City winter.

The Pyrenees, the Peak of the Midi de Bigorre

We look slightly down into a lime-green and white rowboat carrying a woman holding a baby and a man in this nearly square painting. The man wears midnight-blue shoes, pants, jacket, and soft, floppy cap. He sits with his back to us, bending forward to row the boat, which is cropped by the bottom edge of the canvas. The left side of his ruddy face is visible over his left shoulder. The woman and baby both have pale skin. The woman and baby sit across from the man, facing us to our left in the bow. The woman’s long-sleeved, sky-blue dress is crosshatched with pink lines. The baby leans back in the woman’s arms, and wears a pink dress, blue socks, and brown shoes. The wide-brimmed hats on both the woman and baby are painted pale celery green. They gaze toward or just past the man. The corner of the boat’s sail, also painted pale green, is pulled taunt by the wind to our left. Azure-blue water surrounds the boat up to the high horizon line, which brushes the top edge of the painting. The shoreline in the distance is lined with trees and dotted with white houses with red roofs.

Sunset at Gloucester

Banana Tree, Nassau

A rutted, dirt road curves from the bottom center of the canvas toward and behind a grove of tall trees to our left, beneath a pale blue sky with fluffy white clouds that fills the top two-thirds of this horizontal landscape painting. The broad, green canopies of the trees to our left create deep shade over twisting trunks, shrubs, and grasses. A narrow stream meandering alongside the road to our left reflects the moss, pine, and sage greens of the leaves. The land rises in a sloping bank to our right, and leads back to open fields with hedgerows that stretch to the horizon. Shorter, more spindly trees cluster along the bank in the distance. Tiny in scale, people are sprinkled throughout the landscape, either singly or in small groups. In the shade of the grove to our left, a man with dark pantaloons, a brown hat and coat, and a walking stick strolls along the road with a woman wearing a red skirt, a dark shirt, and a white apron and cap. Just off the curve of the road to our right, another man with a walking stick, tan hat, and dark gray pantaloons talks to a woman also wearing red, black, and white. Another person, slightly smaller in stature, stands between them. At a pond farther back from this trio, a man with a broad-brimmed hat sits fishing at the edge of the water. Barely visible, a house with a pitched roof, a tall, brick-red chimney, and a white picket fence peeks out from behind the trees beyond the pond. Finally, a man wearing a rust-orange coat, gray pantaloons with white stockings, and a tall hat, carrying a pole propped on his shoulder, walks toward us on a footpath running alongside the fields. Tall, cream-white clouds dot the pale blue sky above, and tiny dots of dark paint suggest flying birds. Soft sunlight pours across the countryside. The artist signed and dated the painting in small script in the lower right corner: “meijndert Hobbema F 1663.”

A man stands and a woman sits near a herd of seven cows under a light-drenched sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The herd gathers on a grassy rise just beyond some large boulders and twiggy branches. The cows are caramel or copper brown and ivory white. They stand and lie, legs tucked demurely beneath their hulking bodies, facing different directions, their short horns curling like parentheses against the sky. The man stands on our side of the herd with his back to us to the left of center. He holds a tall shepherd’s staff in one hand as he hunches slightly and points with the other, to our right. He wears a high-crowned, wide-brimmed black hat, a crimson-red jacket, black trousers, and black knee-high boots. A knapsack hangs across one shoulder and rests behind his left hip. The woman sits on the far side of the herd so we see her under the man’s raised arm. She looks at him, her face peachy and round under a wide-brimmed straw-colored hat. She wears a white shirt under a robin’s egg-blue dress, and also holds a tall staff upright with both hands. Two more pale-skinned people sit on the ground or on a donkey in the near distance to our right, near the right edge of the canvas. Both wear hats and earth-toned clothing in black, gray, and blue. The donkey stands facing us, its face low, and a pair of baskets are slung across its back. The people and cattle cast long shadows from the setting sun, out of view to our left. The sunset ignites the undersides of the towering, slate-gray clouds with peach and gold against the ice-blue sky. A body of water stretches from beyond the low hill to a distant shore, where stone ruins are outlined on the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. A flock of six birds and another pair dot the sky.

We look across a stream and through a loose screen of shadowy trees at a sunlit farm under a powder-blue sky with towering, puffy clouds in this vertical landscape painting. The ground and stream closest to us are painted in tones of olive green, sepia and earth brown, black, and slate gray. Nearly lost in shadow, a group of six people gathers at the water’s edge in the lower left. Small in scale within the composition, they wear brick-red, gray, or caramel-brown garments. Beyond them, a low picket fence winds through and between a loose band of shadowy trees, which are painted with gnarled, dark gray trunks and camel-brown, sage, and pine-green leaves. The trees to our left are closer and taller, while those to our right are a little farther away. The sun pours from the upper left into the field beyond. The farm buildings there have tan walls and sloping, peach-colored roofs. A few animals and people, smaller than the group in front, stand among the buildings, and more cottages can be glimpsed through a stand of trees on our right. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and a church and steeple are silhouetted against the sky in the deep distance. A few birds fly in front of gray and white clouds that rise from the right side and spread across the top of the canvas.

Gezicht op bolwerk Westerbeer

Tama River in Musashi Province (Bushu Tamagawa), from the series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)"

By the 19th century, Niagara Falls was already an iconic American landscape, nearly verging on mythical. Thomas Cole visited the landmark in May 1829 and composed this romanticized, autumnal scene the following year. In amplifying the natural grandeur of the American landscape, the artist wilfully ommitted the factories, scenic overlooks, and hotels that populated the area in the early 19th century.

Große Praterlandschaft

Channel Bass

This painting depicts a green field of cotton plants with white blossoms. Three individuals are seen harvesting the cotton. They appear to be wearing skirts and bonnets and have dark skin, although their faces aren’t detailed. The background includes buildings on the left and green trees against a pale blue sky with hints of grey. The painting utilizes loose, visible brushstrokes. The color scheme is warm and natural, featuring shades of green, brown, and muted tones.

The Mower

This painting shows a village nestled in hills and trees with a cloudy blue sky at the top. Closest to us are simple white buildings, some with white spires and others with red and brown roofs, surrounded by tall trees. In the distance there are hills, smaller trees, and sailboats on a body of water on the right. The artwork has visible brushstrokes, and the buildings are simple and flat. The color palette is earthy, with soft greens, warm tans, and light whites and yellows.

A Wall, Nassau

Two Poplars in the Alpilles near Saint-Rémy

Rectangular plots of flowers, each in a single color, stretch toward us below a sky nearly filled with cream-white clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. Together, the monochromatic plots create the impression of a patchwork quilt, with large areas of pale pink, butter yellow, bright white, and baby blue. A person walks across the plots to our right. The horizon line comes almost halfway up the painting and is lined with dark brown houses with tall, pitched roofs. Two barren trees twist into the cloudy sky. The loose, short, parallel brushstrokes and touches of paint create a soft, hazy effect.

Evening, Melancholy I

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Estérel Village

Path Near the Pond of Vipers, Fontainebleau Forest

Fishing Boats at Choshi in Shimosa (Soshu Choshi) from the series "One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean (Chie no umi)"

Fishing in a Springtime Valley

Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff, 1829–1906) at Bellevue

Boating

This painting shows a landscape with a village seen from above. The view includes red rooftops and a white church with dome-shaped structures. In the background, there are distant mountains in shades of purple, blue, and red. There are dark green trees on the left, in front of what looks like a pale body of water. Closest to us is a strip of green that suggests a hilltop. The sky above is cloudy, with shades of gray and cream. The brushstrokes in the painting are thick and fluid.

[The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey]

Amida Falls in the Far Reaches of the Kisokaido (Kisoji no oku Amidagataki), from the series "A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri)"

Twilight in the Wilderness

Sketch for "The Oriental Dream"

The Apple Seller

Émilie

A three-storied, white manor house with a rust-red roof and wings extending off both sides sits across an emerald-green lawn lined with tall, sage and dark green trees in this horizontal painting. Straw-brown paths lead to the house from either side of the lawn, where they meet an oval-shaped path directly in front of the house. The grassy area inside the oval is cordoned off with posts and weighted chains. Closer to us, three men, two women, and a gray dog stand on the lawn. Two of the men wear uniforms with navy-blue, button-lined jackets with golden yellow epaulets and collars, dark, tricorn hats, and butter-yellow britches over black, knee-high boots. The third man wears a brown suit with a white collar. Both the women wear white dresses. One has a sky-blue sash around her waist and the other has a black shawl wrapped across her torso, and wears a white bonnet. Two light-skinned people, perhaps a man and a child, walk along the path to our left, wearing gray suits. Four people closer to the house have brown skin. One of them, a woman, stands at the front center of the oval path and other three men approach a door in the wing to our left. One of that trio carries a shovel over his shoulder, one a rake, and the other a staff. A carriage guided by a seated horseman and pulled by four horses enters the scene from our right. To our left and right, covered walkways connect the main house to the side wings. The wing to our right is mostly hidden by trees and cut off by the right edge of the painting. The wing to our left has a teal-blue roof, red brick chimneys, and the same white walls as the manor. The main house has a triangular pediment over the front door and chimneys to each side of the red roof. A spire-like lantern is at the center of the roofline, over the pediment. Faint, wispy white clouds billow against the azure-blue sky above. Centered at the bottom of the scene across a white margin are the words, “A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.”

This painting shows a green landscape from an elevated viewpoint. In the distance, light blue water meets a pale-yellow sky, and the sun casts a golden glow over the landscape. Closest to us is a shore covered in overlapping greenery and several round trees. There is a small hill on the right, with a small gray structure sitting atop it. At the bottom, two indistinct brown animals graze on a dirt mound. Behind them, another gray building is tucked away behind bushes and trees. Golden clouds drift across the sky.

This painting depicts a sunlit forest with densely packed trees. Sunlight filters through the leaves, casting a warm glow and illuminating shades of green with hints of yellow and gold. The forest floor is covered in dark green vegetation and gray rocks, with small visible people in the distance. One of the people is wearing a red shirt or jacket. In the background, the trees become less defined and merge into a misty blur of light and dark greens. The paint has been applied with thick, visible brushstrokes.

Cotton Roses and Sparrow, from an untitled series of Large Flowers

The year 1907 was a turning point for Sargent; the sought-after portraitist stepped away from his successful portraiture career to pursue plein-air landscape painting. This work, depicting his traveling companions and fellow artists Wilfrid and Jane Emmet de Glehn, captures that moment of transition. Combining landscape and portraiture, the composition speaks to friendship and painterly pursuits while also celebrating color, light, and movement.

The Pigeon Tower at Bellevue

Cabin in the Cotton

Youth Playing a Pipe for a Satyr

Fishing by Torch in Kai Province (Koshu hiburi) from the series "One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean (Chie no umi)"