Winslow Homer and the critics in the 1870s

Magazine Antiques, August, 2001 by Margaret C. Conrads

Homers relationship with the critics was not limited to their responses to specific paintings. For example, in 1873, when he was appointed to the hanging committee for the annual exhibition at the National Academy an honor that clearly reflected the esteem of his peers, the critics took him to task for not including his own work in the show [30] Moreover, as a member of the hanging committee he was further censured because the show was considered a disaster, the major complaints being that there were too many foreign works, and that they occupied the most prominent walls. [31] The writer for the Independent, a weekly, declared:

we are sorry to say, [that the show] is one of the very worst we have ever seen.... We fancy the three members of the hanging committee meeting in those rooms and smiling out of one corner of their mouth...like the augurs of old.... We are sorry that they have committed so fatal a mistake, for it seems like a symptom of decadence in an institution... which we hoped was in a state of progress and new life.... For the honor of the Academy...we trust such a torrent of mud will never inundate these walls again. [32]

Despite this drubbing--or perhaps as retribution for it--Homer was elected to the academy's council for the coming year. Interestingly, it seems that at this time Homer was seeking his appropriate place in the New York art community, but his inability to find a comfortable niche for his independent outlook may have turned him away from further official roles at the academy. The press's role in that discomfort cannot he entirely discounted.

In 1879 art writers first commented on Homer's sensitivity to their criticism. The sheets he sent to the American Water Color Society exhibition that year (see Pls. XI and XII) were warmly received, but Charles de Kay reminded readers of the New York Times of Homer's recent history with the criticism of his watercolors.

Mr. Winslow Homer...condones his absence from the water-color exhibition last year by an unusual profusion of pictures. If it be true that his non-appearance was in consequence of harsh criticism passed upon his work at the exhibition second before the present, that only serves to show the good that criticism does.... If Mr. Homer really was angry, he got into a temper with the best of results. [33]

Homer's facility with the watercolor medium imbued his entries with a naturalness and grace that appealed to nearly all. Two years later, the writer for the monthly Critic was less enthusiastic about the sanguine effect of criticism on Homer's art. He blamed his colleagues for the shortcomings he found in Homer's offerings to the 1881 Water Color Society exhibition, particularly the fact they were smaller than in years previous:

The critics of the doily press have been instrumental in [this change]. But with due deference to their opinion, we would suggest they have gone too far in condemnation....Too much following of the advice they give concerning the size of pictures leads a painter to do what Mr. Homer appears to have done--paint a score of small sketches for the most part ill, instead of concentrating his vigor upon half a dozen. [34]