On the Stile
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.”
Colors in this work
Details
- Artist
- Winslow Homer
- Date
- 1878
- Dimensions
- sheet: 22 × 28.4 cm (8 11/16 × 11 3/16 in.)
- Department
- CG-W
- Holding institution
- National Gallery of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- national-gallery-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Art Genome Taxonomy
10 tags
Subject Matter
-
Human Figure Both · 99%
Two clearly rendered figures occupy the center of the composition, and the catalog describes a boy and girl crossing the fence.
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Figures in Nature Both · 99%
The figures are shown outdoors within a field, beneath a tree branch and beside leafy vegetation, with a distant hill behind them.
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Childhood Both · 94%
The catalog identifies the figures as a boy and a girl, and the image presents them as young people in childlike dress and scale.
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Rural Life Both · 96%
A field, fence, distant hill, and overhanging tree create a rural environment explicitly described in the catalog.
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Movement Visual · 97%
The linked hands, extended arms, angled bodies, raised and stepping feet, and flying ribbons create a clear sense of coordinated movement.
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Scenes of Everyday Life Interpretive · 86%
The depicted activity—children helping one another across a fence—reads as an ordinary outdoor scene rather than a formal or ceremonial event.
Medium and Techniques
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Watercolor Metadata · 99%
The recorded medium is watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper.
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Drawing Metadata · 99%
The National Gallery of Art classifies the work as a drawing, made with graphite as well as watercolor and gouache.
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Work on Paper Metadata · 99%
The catalog specifies wove paper as the support.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the work to 1878.
Source & rights
Winslow Homer. On the Stile. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
High-resolution sources
- IIIF image service ↗ 4,565 × 3,554 · National Gallery Of Art · Available