Winslow Homer, The Shell Heap

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0:00:05.4 Steven Zucker: We’re at the Hudson River Museum looking at a large watercolor by Winslow Homer. This is called The Shell Heap, and it was painted in the last decade of the artist’s life.

0:00:14.9 Laura Vookles: What I love about this painting is that we know Homer was a fisherman, and it shows two fly fishermen out on a creek near Homosassa, Florida, where he spent a lot of time near the end of his life. He would divide his time up between the coast of Maine, in Prouts Neck and down in Florida. And here we see two gentlemen enjoying an activity that Homer spent a lot of time doing himself.

0:00:42.7 Steven Zucker: This is on the Gulf Coast, so the west side of Florida. It’s a large estuary with lots of wildlife. But this is Florida, not built up the way it is now. This was a very rural place.

0:00:55.2 Laura Vookles: I love that Homer specifically calls our attention to the pile of shells by calling the painting The Shell Heap. So they’re coming near the shore, and they may have initially been attracted to this because fish would like to gather there around these piles of shells, which were middens that were evidence of the residence of Native Americans, Florida’s first residents. And here, particularly, it could have been the Calusa. And Homer was probably quite aware of this, and thus is calling our attention to this for its historical significance, but also because he knows this is a likely place for him to fish. So he’s got two levels of interest.

0:01:34.6 Steven Zucker: When we think about the work of Winslow Homer, we generally think about oil paint, but this is watercolor.

0:01:40.9 Laura Vookles: In earlier centuries, when people were using watercolor, it was largely because it was easily portable and could be used to sketch outdoors. But there was a real movement in the late 19th century for watercolors to be developed as artworks in their own right. You really see Homer embracing that. And I love the way that the watercolor medium is so fluid here that you’re kind of imagining the humidity of Florida and this perfectly smooth body of water. And here, to me, it contrasts with the oils where the ocean is threatening. It’s this primal clash of the ocean waves wearing away the rocks. And this is something eternal. And man is very ephemeral. And here it’s a quiet moment of reflection and ability to spend time in nature in a more peaceful way.

0:02:36.2 Steven Zucker: Homer really has mastered this media, and it’s a very difficult medium to work in because there’s no going back. In oil paint, which stays wet, you can scrape out the paint, you can rub it away, you can start over again, you can re-blend it. With watercolor, once that color hits the paper, it’s there and there’s almost nothing you can do about it. And look at the techniques that the artist is using. You’ve got transparent layers that are creating a sense of volume, a sense of depth, a sense of the movement of the fronds of those palms in the wind. But then he’s also created these beautiful forms, like look at the arc of the rod and its line. It has a kind of elegance as it moves through space and actually comes towards us so that we might feel as if we could almost hear the plink as that lure is cast into the water.

0:03:25.6 Laura Vookles: The trees are blowing one way, he’s casting the other way. There’s so much movement within that quietness. And I was thinking about something he said about loving to paint outdoors. That was another thing that he did love about watercolor. The immediacy of painting on the spot, as opposed to making a sketch and going home to be inside out of nature while you’re making your finished painting.

0:03:49.6 Steven Zucker: And you get the sense of the brilliance of the light that he was seeing at this moment. The shells are largely the white of the paper that is left untouched. And so instead of painting white on top, he’s actually just created what is known as a reserve. That is, he’s painted around them. He’s painted the shadows. You can also see that in the trunk of the palm tree. But then look at that little splash of gray that so cleverly defines the shadow cast on the trunk of that palm by the foliage just in front of it, constructing immediately this sense of depth.

0:04:23.2 Steven Zucker: And then if you look even more closely at the reflection of the boat in the water, you can see an almost scumbled quality. That’s probably the result of the artist having laid down a little bit of wax, maybe from a candle, having rubbed that against the surface so that the paper is less absorbent in that particular area. Look at the complexity of those greens. How many greens and yellows make up that foliage set off against the blue of the water. And despite the looseness of this image of the grasses behind the boat, of the shell in the left foreground of the water, I feel as if I’m still on the edge of being able to make out the specific species of trees. There is a kind of specificity here despite the looseness of his handling of the surface.

0:05:07.1 Laura Vookles: He is showing you all the infinite details, even the Spanish moss hanging from the trees.

0:05:15.2 Steven Zucker: I get the sense when I look at this, because of the quiet quality of the painting, that the artist is just really enjoying himself. He’s enjoying being here, but he’s enjoying looking closely and then sharing that vision on this piece of paper and then ultimately sharing it with us.

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