Harpers Weekly Art-Students And Copyists In The Louvre Gallery, Paris January order 11th, 1868, Winslow Homer Wood Block Engraving
Winslow Homer is revered today both for the powerful and dramatic images he.
Winslow Homer is revered today both for the powerful and dramatic images he created as well as for his enormous technical skill in watercolor and oil. But it was another medium, engraving, in which the artist first revealed his talents.
Harpers Weekly Art-Students And Copyists In The Louvre Gallery, Paris was published in Harper's Weekly on January 11th, 1868 Art students study while teachers look on and guide them. It is a beautiful afternoon in the Louvre.
Museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, MET New York, National Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum, MFA Boston, Philadelphia Museum Of Art among others have this engraving in their collections.
Condition: excellent. The slight lines appearing as folds are actually part of the image as it was originally printed.
About the artist:
Homer learned the fundamentals of draftsmanship at the age of eighteen as an apprentice to the Boston lithographer John H. Bufford. Two years later, in 1857, he established himself as a freelance illustrator, creating original engraving compositions for Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion and Harper's Weekly. Homer's role in the production of the prints was to draw the image on a block of boxwood order. Engravers then carved away everything but the lines drawn on the block, using crosshatching to convey shade and modeling. Finally, the engravers inked the block to produce the print.
Even at such a young age, with little formal art instruction, Homer displayed his skill at composition, creating dynamic and well-balanced images that foreshadow his later masterpieces in oil and watercolor. He even experimented with composite images, in which multiple vignettes are combined to create a rich and full narrative. Homer often chose fashionable people engaged in modern leisure activities as the subjects for his Ballou's and Harper's engravings.