Winslow Homer and the Camera: Photography and the Art of Painting - Hardcover

Goodyear III, Frank H.; Byrd, Dana E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300214553 ISBN 13: 9780300214550

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2018

Synopsis

A revelatory exploration of Winslow Homer’s engagement with photography, shedding new light on his celebrated paintings and works on paper

One of the greatest American painters of the 19th century, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) also maintained a deep engagement with photography throughout his career. Focusing on the important, yet often-overlooked, role that photography played in Homer’s art, this volume exposes Homer’s own experiments with the camera (he first bought one in 1882). It also explores how the medium of photography and the larger visual economy influenced his work as a painter, watercolorist, and printmaker at a moment when new print technologies inundated the public with images. Frank Goodyear and Dana Byrd demonstrate that photography offered Homer new ways of seeing and representing the world, from his early commercial engravings sourced from contemporary photographs to the complex relationship between his late-career paintings of life in the Bahamas, Florida, and Cuba and the emergent trend of tourist photography. The authors argue that Homer’s understanding of the camera’s ability to create an image that is simultaneously accurate and capable of deception was vitally important to his artistic practice in all media. Richly illustrated and full of exciting new discoveries, Winslow Homer and the Camera is a long-overdue examination of the ways in which photography shaped the vision of one of America’s most original painters.

About this title

Book Description:

This groundbreaking study of Winslow Homer’s engagement with photography examines both the artist’s own photographic practice and photography’s influence on his work across media.

About the Author:

Dana E. Byrd is assistant professor of art history at Bowdoin College. Frank H. Goodyear III is co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0300214553
• ISBN 13: 9780300214550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208