THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 9, 1995 TAG: 9512080065
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
AT LEAST a half-dozen paintings done in Virginia are among those found in the comprehensive exhibition of Winslow Homer's works now drawing huge crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Homer, a New England painter (1836-1910), trooped through Virginia during the Civil War as a correspondent for Harper's Weekly, a lively pictorial journal that was the ancestor of Life magazine.
In addition to his illustrations for Harper's, he also painted scenes in Virginia when he returned for a visit to Petersburg during the 1870s.
From boyhood, Homer was a wanderer, traveling across New England, and sometimes south to Virginia and North Carolina, according to Lloyd Goodrich, the former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
According to Goodrich, the date of Homer's most famous painting dealing with a Virginia subject is ``The Carnival,'' done in 1877.
The richly colored painting, which is part of the current National Gallery exhibition, depicts a black man dressed in a harlequin costume. Presumably headed for a carnival, he is surrounded by sewing women and children with American flags.
Also on view at the gallery is a 1876 work entitled ``Cotton Pickers,'' considered among the best of Homer's early paintings in color. It is believed to have been painted in Virginia, although some speculation has placed it in North Carolina.
Homer was like Mark Twain in his view - remarkable for the time - that blacks were to be taken seriously and not as objects of ridicule. And, as Frank Kelly, co-curator of the exhibition in Washington, noted, ``He painted American scenes when many in this country were looking to Europe for inspiration.'' Just as Twain did, with pen, rather than brush.
Kelly believes that Homer returned to Virginia because he had painted in the state during the war. (Another painting from the exhibition is ``Skirmish in the Wilderness,'' done in 1864. It is believed to be a Virginia scene painted during the Battle of the Wilderness.)
``He probably came back to see how things had changed during Reconstruction,'' Kelly said.
Homer's stay in Petersburg in the 1870s was chronicled by Homer biographer Jean Gould. Each day, after his breakfast in a Petersburg hotel, the artist took paint box, drawing pad, easel and a campstool, and set out on foot to paint scenes in and around the town's cabins housing African-Americans.
News of his presence and activities spread throughout Petersburg. The artist's attention to blacks was bitterly resented by most whites, many of whom were still licking their wounds from the Civil War.
Although Virginia is very well represented in the National Gallery exhibition of Homer's works, one painting should be of particular interest to North Carolinians: ``Diamond Shoal'' (1905).
The watercolor is a scene off Cape Hatteras showing the stern of the Diamond Shoal Lightship which had been in service since 1824. It is believed to have been a scene the artist observed while traveling by steamer between New York and Florida.
It was the last watercolor the artist painted, and shows his mastery of light, air and water. Finished five years before his death, ``Diamond Shoal'' contains the same vigor and power which characterized his earlier sea scenes.
The popularity of the Homer exhibit was not unexpected. Homer, as Kelly reminded, is an artist who has never grown out of favor because he is so throughly American. He opens windows on the past, presenting scenes which, once viewed, are remembered forever. MEMO: The Homer exhibition is at The National Gallery in Washington, D.C.,
through Jan. 28. Passes are required for admission to the exhibition on
weekends and holidays (Saturdays and Sundays as well as Dec. 26 through
31).
For more information, call (202) 842-6713 or the Telecommunications
Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo of "Cotton Pickers"
by CNB