Winslow Homer, Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba

0:00:06.5 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re at the National Portrait Gallery in a special exhibition titled 1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions. And we’re looking at a large canvas by the U.S. painter Winslow Homer. But Homer is not painting the United States here. He’s painting Cuba.

0:00:25.6 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: We are right in front of the Santísima Trinidad platform of the Morro Castle in Santiago, Cuba.

0:00:35.2 Dr. Steven Zucker: This is a castle built by the Spanish to ward off pirates and other European powers in the 1600s.

0:00:42.2 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: And you can see that there is a guard tower and there are two cannons. They’re pointed towards the mouth of Santiago Bay, so they could easily pick off any ships that might have tried to enter.

0:00:55.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: But by the time this was painted in 1902, technologies had changed and the power of this castle was diminished. Let’s step back for a moment and place this painting in its historical context. This was painted in 1902, but it depicts a series of events four years earlier in 1898, the year when the United States ousts the Spanish.

0:01:17.9 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: The U.S. intervenes in the Cuban independence war against Spain. So the Cubans were fighting against the Spanish, and they were winning. But the Spanish retaliated by creating concentration camps. People were dying of famine, of disease. And people in the United States were understandably very affected and uncomfortable knowing that there’s this humanitarian crisis. In addition to that, the U.S.S. Maine explodes as it’s anchored in Havana Harbor. It was sent there by McKinley to be a symbol of American power, just in case that revolutionary fight started to threaten American sugar investments. So Spain declares war on the United States, and then the United States officially declares war on Spain on April 25th.

0:02:08.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: And then McKinley sends more U.S. warships, and they blockade this harbor.

0:02:13.6 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: The North Atlantic Fleet is patrolling Cuban waters. And here we’re in the southern part of the island, in the Bay of Santiago. And the mouth of the harbor is 400 feet wide. So when the U.S. North Atlantic Fleet steams over, they actually trap the Spanish fleet which was inside the bay getting fuel, getting supplies. They must have been petrified because escaping meant going through this narrow mouth and so they would have to exit the bay one ship at a time. And because of the technology that the U.S. Navy had, the Spanish knew that they could not escape without being seen.

0:02:53.9 Dr. Steven Zucker: And in fact, the U.S. picked off each ship in turn as the Spanish exited from the largest, most powerful Spanish ship to the smallest.

0:03:01.9 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: What you can see in the Homer painting, these conical bands of filmy white light that extend across the sky, the U.S. ships are waiting, watching for the Spanish to attempt this very courageous escape. And one by one, the U.S. Navy sinks every last Spanish ship.

0:03:22.6 Dr. Steven Zucker: But this painting is so quiet. This is not a painting of the battle itself. This is a moment of anticipation. This is a moment of patience. When will that move be made? There’s such tremendous quiet and such tremendous tension.

0:03:39.3 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: So Homer, I think, was interested in that tension. Homer understood that the searchlight was the most modern piece of technology at that time. And throughout his career, he was very interested in technology and warfare. His first painting was of the sharpshooter, which he witnessed in the Civil War.

0:04:01.1 Dr. Steven Zucker: Well, look at the way that the artist has created a parallel between the cannon and the horizontal searchlight. The cannon is the technology of war of an earlier era, and it has been surpassed. And there’s this incredible contrast between the solidity of that cannon, this huge piece of metal, and the ephemeral nature of light, which is perhaps an even more powerful weapon.

0:04:25.0 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: As a witness of the Civil War, Homer understood war in a visceral way, in an emotional way, in a way that the hunt for him was quite apparent by the use of the searchlight. He’s using those bands of light in contrast to those antiquated Spanish guns, which would have no effect on the steel armored ships of the American fleet.

0:04:48.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: This is a painting all about human action, and yet there’s not a single human being depicted. We know from conservation studies that Homer had, at one point, placed a human figure right against the guard tower, but he’s painted that person out, and there is, as a result, a kind of eerie quiet. It’s night. The moon is illuminating the sky, but it’s overshadowed by human intervention, but we can’t actually see those American ships. Nothing is apparent, and yet we know exactly what’s happening.

0:05:20.4 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: What you’re seeing is cold-blooded warfare.

0:05:22.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: Let’s take just a moment to look at these incredible touches of paint. Look at the way that there’s just a pure white that defines the horizon as it’s picking up the glare of the searchlight, or the unexpectedly colorful scumbling that we see in the foreground. So Homer leaves us with this quiet painting, but one that is all about the anticipation of this terrible moment that is about to unfold.

0:05:49.0 Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay: This painting captures a kind of ambivalence about the U.S. becoming an empire. And I think that Homer might have been questioning it himself. But in the end, I do think that he landed on supporting this U.S. expansion.

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