A master of 19th-century American painting is getting his largest watercolors exhibition in nearly 50 years.
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts acquired in 1894 its first work by Winslow Homer, the existential Fog Warning, while he was at the height of his success. The museum would eventually add another 10 oil paintings and almost 50 watercolors — including childhood drawings and his final, unfinished work — making it uniquely suited to staging Of Light and Air.
Rarely exhibited, Homer’s watercolors convey “more immediate and observational” themes than his dramatic oil works, the show’s co-curators told The Art Newspaper, and, displayed in a low-light setting to protect against fading, “look nearly as vibrant as the day Homer painted them.”