The Fountains at Night, World's Columbian Exposition

Winslow Homer was a painter. He thought of himself as a painter and directed his greatest efforts toward this art form. Whether with oils or watercolors, he sought to push his painting to address large themes, and did so in a vocabulary that broke from many American traditions. As an artist devoted to the world as it is, he saw painting as an effort not only to record a particular place and time,...

The Art Institute of Chicago is fortunate to include among its holdings of American art twenty-five watercolors and three monochrome drawings by Winslow Homer, all of which were donated by area collectors between 1927 and 2007. Twenty of these works were acquired in the 1910s by the cultural leader and philanthropist Martin A. Ryerson (see figure 1), who bequeathed them to the Art Institute in 1933. The museum can hardly claim to have led the way in acquiring Homer’s works. Other public …