III. Water-Colors 08 To take a specific example or two

To take a specific example or two, what subject, for instance, is more worthy of a great master's brush than Homer's "Undertow," two half-drowned young bathers locked in each other's arms, the two beachmen dragging them clear of the mighty, blue-green wave curving behind them? Here is a subject of almost weekly occurrence on our coast. Who ever thought of painting it before? And that marvellous picture of "The Cotton Pickers." This,canvas paintings for sale, to me,was the first clear note Homer had sounded. The "Prisoners to the Front," painted just after the war, was a strong, realistic picture, true and forceful in color and composition, and, of course, admirable in drawing, but that was all. It told its story at once, and having heard it to the end you acknowledged its truth and went away content. But "The Cotton Pickers" left something more in your mind. The gray dawn of the morning dimly lighted up a field of cotton, the negro quarters on the horizon line; dotted here and there, bending over the bolls, were groups of negroes, singly and in pairs, filling their bags; in the foreground walked two young negro girls, the foremost a dark mulatto—the whole story of Southern slavery written in every line of her patient, uncomplaining face. art oil paintings online
This picture alone placed Homer in the first rank of American painters of his day, and he has never lost this place, for not only was the picture all it should be in composition and mass, but, unlike many of Homer's pictures of an earlier period, it was deliciously gray and cool in tone. It places him also in the front rank of the painters of our time. Jules Breton never gave us anything more pleasing, and never anything stronger in drawing,art oil painting reproduction, more true to life, or more poetic in conception and treatment. I mention Breton because, of the men on the other side, he is the only one who affects, so to speak, a similar line of subjects. Breton loves his peasants and paints them as if he did. Homer loved his subjects entirely in the same spirit. How unequally the two men have been rewarded you all know. An all-wise American who some years ago offered $40,000 for a Breton at auction could not at the time have been induced to give one-tenth of that amount for a Homer; and yet, for vigor, truth, sentiment, and technic—yes, technic, for this picture was superbly painted—"The Cotton Pickers,"in my judgment, will outlive the other if the time should ever come when picture-buyers think for themselves. original oil paintings wholesale