15
●
WINSLOW HOMER
Study: Fresh Air
.
Pen and black ink on cream laid paper, circa 1879. 200x125 mm; 7
7
/
8
x4
7
/
8
inches (image);
200x223 mm; 7
7
/
8
x8
3
/
4
inches (full sheet). Ex-collection the artist James D. Smillie; thence
by descent to the current owners.
Drawn by Homer to be illustrated in the American Watercolor Society’s twelfth annual
exhibition catalogue, NewYork, 1879 (see also lots 13, 14 and 16).
We are grateful to Abigail Booth Gerdts, director of the
Record of the Works of Winslow
Homer
, for helping to identify this drawing. Gerdts notes,“The catalogue of the American
Water Color Society Twelfth Annual Exhibition (held in NewYork, month of February
1879) included a quantity of thumbnail images referencing—not reproducing—watercolors
in the exhibition. These little line drawings were not signed; it may be presumed some
were done by the artist of the watercolor represented, and some by other graphic
specialists. In this case, there is every indication Homer provided the vignette from his
watercolor painting himself.The drawings were done ‘normal’ size; then photoengraved,
and greatly reduced in scale.The image photographically duplicated from the drawing . . .
is 3"x2" in size in the Water Color Society’s catalogue. James D. Smillie was one of the
three-man ‘Catalogue Committee’ for the exhibition.”
Published in Goodrich/Gerdts,
Record of theWorks of Winslow Homer
, volume III, number
757 (listed as “unlocated”).
Homer made this pen and ink study from his seminal, same-titled watercolor now at the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, NewYork, see below (Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 41.1087). A
plein
air
representation of a fancifully dressed shepherdess at Houghton Farm, the upstate New
York property of one of Homer’s patrons.
[40,000/60,000]
© Brooklyn Museum of Art
Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910). Fresh Air, 1878.Watercolor
with opaque white highlights over charcoal on cream, moderately
thick, rough-textured wove paper, 20 1/16 x 14 in. (51 x 35.6 cm).
Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 41.1087
