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| The Gulf Stream |
Artist:
Winslow Homer (American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine)
Date:
1899
Culture:
American
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
28 1/8 x 49 1/8 in. (71.4 x 124.8 cm)
Classification:
Paintings
Credit Line:
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906
Back in Prouts Neck, Maine, after one of his winter visits to the Bahamas, Homer painted this dramatic scene of imminent disaster. A man faces his demise on a dismasted, rudderless fishing boat, sustained by only a few stalks of sugarcane and threatened by sharks and a distant waterspout. He is oblivious to the schooner on the left horizon, which Homer later added to the canvas as a sign of hopeful rescue. Some art historians have read The Gulf Stream as symbolic, connecting it with the period’s heightened racial tensions. The painting has also been interpreted as an expression of Homer’s presumed sense of mortality and vulnerability following the death of his father.
Provenance
the artist (1899–1906); M. Knoedler and Company, New York (1906)
Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org
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