An Introduction to "Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington"
An Introduction to “Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington”
Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), Winslow Homer, 1880, albumen print, 5 7/8 x 4 1/4 inches. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. Gift of the Homer Family, 1964.69.179.5.
There is an image that circulates among 19th-century American art scholars as a source of enticing speculation. The image, dated circa 1896, portrays a scene at the studio of painter Milton James Burns, in which four mustachioed men sit around a table, suit jackets off, playing cards. If you squint and use a bit of imagination, two players at that table—a slight, bespectacled man resting casually, and one larger in girth, smoking a pipe—could well be American artists Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington, respectively.
The thought of the young and ambitious Remington rubbing shoulders with the older and more commercially successful Homer is an insatiably compelling one, but one that will have to remain a hypothetical. The provenance of the photo remains a mystery and the “Homer” in question is bulkier than we know him to have been. There is no verifiable proof that the two men—Homer, documentarian of the Civil War and master of coastal and Eastern U.S. scenes and Remington, painter and sculptor of the American West— ever met in person, though both frequented similar clubs and galleries in New York and each also attended the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition.
"You must not paint everything you see. You must wait, and wait patiently until the exceptional, the wonderful effect or aspect comes." —Winslow Homer
Their work, however, shares a unique and vital place in American history, defining how Americans saw themselves during the Gilded Age and how they have continued to view their nation since. Both artists crafted narratives with a journalist’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s gift for igniting the imagination. Between the two, they created some of the 19th and 20th century’s best-known artworks of American peoples and landscapes—images rich with atmosphere and feeling, and devoid of anything extraneous. Yet, their art has never been exhibited side by side until now.
This fall, the Portland Museum of Art is proud to present Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington, the first exhibition to explore the unexpected resonances between the themes, artistic sensibilities, and technical processes of these two great American artists and exploring the mythologies both artists perpetuated in their work. Co-organized by the PMA, Denver Art Museum, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Mythmakers situates Homer and Remington within their historical moment, highlighting moments of convergence in their biographies, their chosen subject matter, and their experimentation across media in an era of profound social change.
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909) were born a generation apart but died within a year of one another. Both grew up in the Northeast (Homer in Massachusetts, Remington in upstate New York), and were largely self-taught; they both documented conflict (Homer the Civil War and Remington the Spanish-American War). Both began as illustrators and oil painters while developing skill in other media (Homer in watercolor, Remington in sculpture).
"Big art is a process of elimination…cut down and out—do your hardest work outside the picture, and let your audience take away something to think about— to imagine…What you want to do is to just create the thought—materialize the spirit of a thing…" —Frederic Remington
Davis & Sanford, N.Y., Frederic Remington, circa 1905. Gift of the Remington Estate. Image courtesy of the Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
Each also helped refine visions of America at the turn of the century by depicting vast tracts of untrammeled wilderness and glorifying singular figures—Adirondack guides, cowboys, Native Americans—who knew those spaces intimately. Both men trafficked in a calculatedly nostalgic vision of landscapes that were disappearing and ways of life that were becoming obsolete. Looking carefully at Homer and Remington’s work today helps us address our own rapidly changing environment, debates about masculinity, and our current attempts to define what it means to be American in an age, like Homer and Remington’s, of migration and immigration.
The myths Homer and Remington created were also their own. Remington was a lifelong easterner who remained fascinated by the West largely from afar. In fact, this exhibition highlights little known works that Remington created of his properties in New York State. Homer retreated from New York City to a quiet life in Maine, where he depicted dramatic images of nature. However, as those who have visited the Winslow Homer Studio know, Prouts Neck was and is a summer retreat where the artist maintained a close social network of family, hired servants, and friends. Both men also circulated amongst a similar networks of dealers and publishers in New York City. That they successfully sold themselves as selfreliant explorers of the American wilderness attests to the power of their mythmaking abilities.
To create a myth that resonates throughout one’s own time and reverberates across the generations is a spectacular feat. It requires a prodigious amount of natural talent, an uncanny eye for detail, and a great sense of the theatrical. To walk through the galleries of Mythmakers is to revel in all of these qualities that these two artists—whether they met in person or not—shared.
This feature was originally published in PMA Magazine, the PMA’s quarterly members magazine. Would you like the inside track on all things PMA and features such as this delivered to your mailbox in an award-winning print format? Become a member today!