The Makings of Memorable Art

Hi John,

Today's selection is a little different than some we've shared recently. It's a lively review of 3 different artists of which any of them could have been famous, however, only one of them was.

While studying the differences in their art and their lives, it's also a vital reminder. Just because "they" don't pronounce you famous or as well known as others, it doesn't detract from the beauty and skill of what you create.

Know your worth.

Enjoy,

BoldBrush Studio Team

Winslow Homer, Alexander H. Wyant, and Homer Dodge Martin were all successful American landscape painters born in 1836. If you've ever studied or enjoyed American art, you know about Winslow Homer, but you're probably wondering who Wyant and Martin are and what they painted. When I recently read a similar sentence with the three names, I did too.

When I was a kid I was torn between wanting to go to art school to become an artist and wanting to go to Oxford to become a scholar of classical languages. Art school won out, but the love of history and language has never left, and now that I'm older I've found a happy combination of the two by digging up original documents on the history of art and trying to understand not just how a piece was painted but why. I've always enjoyed Winslow Homer's work and am delighted when I stumble across it in a museum, so when I stumbled across the title "Winslow Homer Artist" in the Salmagundi Club's archive of antique art journals, I stopped immediately to read it. It was an article from The Commonweal, the April 3 1936 issue, written by James W. Lane, and was an appreciation of the career of Winslow Homer. A little-known tip for anyone who likes art history: articles of art criticism from the past are amazing, especially if they are from contemporaries. You get not only the perspective of someone who is seeing the work for the first time, you get a feel for the zeitgeist of the time and lots of context you miss when viewing works in the present day. Granted, 1936 is twenty-six years after Winslow Homer died, but it was much closer than we are today, and just long enough after for his work and career to start to settle in to the national consciousness. We all recognize his name and know why one would want to write an article about him - but what about Wyant and Martin?

Well, Mr. James W. Lane, the author of this 1936 article, makes the case that Alexander Wyant and Homer Martin, both born in the same year as Winslow Homer and working in the same milieu, are not known as well (back then) or not at all (today) because "their work was a kind of epitome of our esthetic taste and, regrettably, that taste was not what it might have been. George Santayana has said that the American mind was shy and feminine and liked to see Nature in water-colors. This is certainly a definition that distinguishes the paintings of Wyant and Martin -- dreamy, low-keyed, poetic and autumnal, not very emphatic either as to form or as to drawing; but it has nothing whatever to do with the paintings of Homer."

Mr. Lane goes on to argue that the significant difference between Homer and his contemporaries Wyant and Martin was that the latter two had studied in Europe and had a highly traditional art education while Homer was largely self-taught and, though he did go to Europe, never studied with a foreign master and never did master copies in the museums. "No one can paint if he becomes manacled to human teachers. That Nature is the great teacher is trite but true. Museums, also, are a help but rarely. Winslow Homer, without being as solitary as Ryder, knew all this instinctively. He therefore taught himself to draw and was beholden to no man." Lane seems to imply that Homer's strength lies in his being self-taught, but quite frankly I disagree. It's an oversimplification and besides, I've seen too many self-taught artists to believe there is any inherent virtue or benefit to being self-taught. It has to be something else. But my curiosity was piqued and so, like a good researcher, I went to look at the work of Wyant and Martin to see how it compared.

Here is one by Homer Dodge Martin, from the Metropolitan Museum. I live in New York and the Met is one of my favorite places to go when I have a spare afternoon, so I suppose it says something that I don't recall seeing this one although it's on display in the American Wing. I do remember seeing Winslow Homer's paintings in the American Wing.

Here is another one by Homer Dodge Martin, this time from the Brooklyn Museum, which I have also been to. I have an excuse for not recalling this one though, because it is just a sketch and not on display. The online description says that it was painted around the time that Martin was starting to shake off the influence of the Hudson River School in favor of the more modern Barbizon School in France, where he was studying at the time.

After looking at a few more of his works, I think that Martin's work is actually quite solid, and he is certainly technically capable - but Mr. Lane of 1936 is right that it is not as vigorous or definite as the work of Winslow. Homer Martin is definitely more low-key. Moving on to Alexander H. Wyant: his work appeals to me more than Martin's does, he has a strong American Tonalist vibe and I've always had a soft spot for the Tonalists. This painting in the collection of the Smithsonian, Autumn at Arkville, has a definite atmospheric appeal. It sets a strong mood of autumn, and it has bold brushwork and a solid color scheme.

Alexander H. Wyant, Autumn at Arkville, oil on canvasAnd then Alexander Wyant also has a work in the Met. However, it's not on view so I can honestly say that I've never seen it before. It has a moody atmosphere similar to the first painting; you feel like Alexander had an opinion about this place, and I like that, but it's also true that Mr. Lane 1936 is right again about the "dreamy, poetic, and autumnal."

This begs the question: are Martin and Wyant near-forgotten today because their work is soft and dreamy rather than vigorous? They could both paint, no one is going to argue that. I think they're really more technically adept than Winslow Homer. But Winslow Homer painted too, and he's the one who's famous. Setting aside the argument of training (which is just a red herring in my opinion - self-taught or professionally taught has never been a defining factor in an artist's success) and looking at the work itself, there are two major differences that leap to the eye: Narrative, and Value.

I need to insert a disclaimer here: when I went to art school, I studied illustration, and "narrative" and "value" are two of the words that we heard the most, so when I look at art I'm biased toward them. And it's no coincidence that Homer should be strong in these two areas; he started his career as a commercial illustrator, doing black-and-white engravings forHarper's Magazine. But the concepts of narrative and value are of equal importance in both illustration and fine art, so that early training served him well. Here is some of Homer's work that exemplifies his use of narrative and value.

He was an expert at silhouetting a figure against the landscape, making both distinct strong shapes, and yet incorporating them into a coherent narrative. This is another major difference: Homer certainly employs the figure in his landscape far more than our other two artists. One is tempted to ask if pure landscape will always be doomed to play second fiddle to a peopled landscape, if man's narcissistic tendencies mean that he will always prefer figurative work to non-figurative - that is a question for another day, but I don't think that is necessarily the case. Claude Monet is one of the most famous artists in the world and he painted the human figure only rarely. I think it's about more than the inclusion of figures in Homer's work; it's the way the human figures and the landscape together tell a story that makes his pieces so powerful. In this watercolor below, the girls and the landscape take equal visual importance. The massive outcropping of rock that the fisherwomen stand on is just as much a character as they are, and, lit up along with them against the misty background, the girls and the rock are united in their sense of strength.

To sum up: why is Homer so famous and Wyant and Martin so nearly forgotten? I think Mr. Lane of 1936 unwittingly hit upon something when he points out in his article that "In 1865, he (Homer) was elected to the Academy. A National Academician under thirty! Even this was rather enviable in those days, for (John) La Farge himself, a year Homer's senior, was not elected until 1869, while (George) Inness, who was eleven years older, did not gain admission before 1868. The picture which brought about Homer's election was the "Prisoners from the Front," now in the Metropolitan Museum. He had a faculty, which he acquired through his years at the front, of hitting off camp life with a telling touch." In other words, Homer knew how to tell a story, and in this specific painting, he was touching the nerve of the American Civil War and capturing a moment that, one year after the Civil War had ended, would have resonated with the mixed emotions of loss, relief, and resentment that so many Americans were experiencing. Reputedly completed only four years after he began to work in oils, it is really not a great painting, technically; he would become a much better painter over the ensuing years. But the narrative is there, and that was enough to capture his audience.

Wyant and Martin are good painters, but what they don't have that Homer does is a strong sense of value structure or a clear narrative. I remember seeing, at the Brooklyn Museum, Homer's painting In the Mountains; it's a simple piece but it stopped me in my tracks and I had to sit down and look for a while. I even pulled out my sketchbook and did a value study (that's how you know I'm an illustrator). While it's one of his less-well known pieces, it captures the qualities that are his strengths so well and, being mostly landscape, is a great contrast to the work of Wyant and Martin. In this painting, the landscape is the main star: the figures are just daubs and streaks of paint. But, the way they stand on the mountainside, sunlit against the cloud-shadowed hill behind them, they totally pull the painting together. The drama of the clouds above, the staid plainness of the rocky foreground, the epic quality of the diminutive figures on the expanse of the mountains - it was this finely tuned sense of the grand drama of life, even in events as quotidian as a hike up a mountain that has made his work enduringly powerful.

Eager to Learn More?

The BoldBrush Studio Blog is a great way to learn more about art and art history. If you'd like to read other interviews and posts showing great artists and their stories, please click the button below.

BoldBrush Videos are available for unlimited streaming. This is a DIGITAL CONTENT ONLY product. You will not receive a DVD.