Not just seascapes: Winslow Homer’s rendering of Black humanity
People think they know the work of American artist Winslow Homer. His boisterous paintings of the Atlantic coast and of scenes such as barefoot boys playing a game of Snap the Whip are comfortingly familiar to many art lovers. But Homer (1836-1910) also made paintings that challenged viewers, both in his time and now in ours, to wrestle with the effects of racism and inequality.
“There’s a different Winslow Homer for every age,” says Sylvia Yount, who, along with Stephanie Herdrich, curated the exhibition “Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In an interview, the curators explained that they wanted to introduce Homer to
