Art Historian, Patricia Junker, Lectures on "Winslow Homer: Pictures for Anglers"

Angling was not just a favorite pastime of painter Winslow Homer, it was also the inspiration for much of his art. Angling suggested to Homer new subject matter for pictures. It took him to remote and exotic realms. The intense visual experience of fly-fishing afforded Homer a close involvement with nature’s mysteries, revealing to him new worlds of color, form, and dynamism. Traveling to storied fishing locales in the Adirondacks of upstate New York, the Laurentide regions of Quebec, and central Florida, Homer worked in the traveler’s medium of watercolor, which perfectly suited his interpretations of the aquatic world and the fleeting sensations of light and color to which angler’s are treated. In angling, Homer also found new patrons for his work, and an enthusiastic audience of Victorian-era sportsmen who could appreciate his highly informed pictures as few others could. This lecture underscored how closely Winslow Homer is aligned with the new taste for sporting art in the late nineteenth century. It also showed how the focus that made Winslow Homer such a penetrating observer of the angler’s sport also made him a brilliant colorist, sensitive draftsman, and versatile and inventive painter.

Patricia Junker is the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, which accompanied the special exhibition, Casting a Spell; Winslow Homer, Artist and Angler, organized by the Amon Carter Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, a publication which includes essays by art historians and by the angling authority Paul Schullery. Junker’s interests in Winslow Homer have encompassed a study of his life and work at Prout’s Neck, Maine, and research currently underway on the artist’s paintings of fishermen on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Other recent projects have included exhibitions and publications on Edward Hopper: Women and Andrew Wyeth, Rebel, both at the Seattle Art Museum within the past year.

The lecture was part of the Library's Saturday Public Lecture Series, made possible by an anonymous donor. Admission to the lecture is free, but seating is limited.

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