106 學年度學測英文 第 51 題

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is regarded by many as the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century. Born and raised in Boston, he began his career at age eighteen in his hometown, working as an apprentice at a printing company. Skilled at drawing, he soon made a name for himself making illustrations for novels, sheet music, magazines, and children’s books.

He then moved to New York City, where he worked as a freelance illustrator with Harper’s Weekly, a popular magazine of the time, and began painting. Homer was assigned to cover the inauguration of President Lincoln and, later, the Civil War. His pictures of the Union troops won international recognition. Homer moved to England and, after a two-year stay, returned to America. He settled permanently in Maine in 1883.

From the late 1850s until his death in 1910, Winslow Homer produced a body of work distinguished by its thoughtful expression and its independence from artistic conventions. A man of multiple talents, Homer excelled equally in the arts of illustration, oil painting, and watercolor. Many of his works—depictions of children at play and in school, farm girls attending to their work, hunters and their prey—have become classic images of nineteenth-century American life. Others speak to more universal themes such as the primal relationship of humans to nature.

This two-week exhibition highlights a wide and representative range of Homer’s art. It shows his extraordinary career from the battlefields, farmland, and coastal villages of America, to the North Sea fishing village of Cullercoats, the rocky coast of Maine, the Adirondacks, and the Caribbean. The exhibition offers viewers an opportunity to experience and appreciate the breadth of his remarkable artistic achievement.