When Homer Went to Gloucester
Matthew Whiman | MFA Boston | 3rd November 2025
Homer was slow to pick up watercolour. By mid-career, though, he became the pre-eminent American artist of this luminous but tricky medium. This was a time when the great outdoors lost its religious connotations. That suited Homer’s observational style and led to what became his late, great subject – the sea. He painted the drama of the ocean and portrayed the fishermen who worked it as “industrious”. It was with such images that Homer created a place for watercolour, and himself, in American art.