Winslow Homer 1836-1910

Mrs. Charles S. Homer (the artist's sister-in-law)
Maria W. Blanchard (the artist's cousin), 1918 (acquired from the above)
Ralph Whittier (the artist's second cousin), Bangor, Maine, 1936 (acquired from the above)
Estate of Ralph Whittier, Seaport, Maine (sold by Rebecca C.J. Jackson, New Boston, New Hampshire)
Maynard Walker, New York, 1950 (acquired from the above)
Babcock Galleries, New York, 1950 (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above, 1956

Fieldstone, New York, Fieldstone School Arts Center, Collector's Choice, March-April 1957, no. 7
Brooklyn, New York, The Brooklyn Museum; Andover, Massachusetts, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, American Painting: Selections from the Collection of Daniel and Rita Fraad, June-November 1964, no. 9, p. 17, illustrated
Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum, American Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings from the Collection of Rita and Daniel Fraad, May-July 1985, no. 6, pp. 13-14, illustrated
Rochester, New York, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Chicago, Illinois, Terra Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Art; Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Winslow Homer in the 1890s: Prout's Neck Observed, August 1990- September 1991, no. 14, pp. 111, 115, illustrated in color p. 116, pl. 28

Philip C. Beam writes, "In Prout's Neck in Winter Homer forthrightly depicted an Arctic scene.  Here the problem of appreciating winter on its own terms is reduced to its barest essentials.  No hunter with whom we can identify is present, no fox whose plight we can gauge, and no waves whose moving rhythms we can admire.  The artist has effaced himself except as a reporter of a scene that others avoid--the coast in the dead of winter, a seaside resort abandoned by its summer residents …

"In keeping with this stark message, Homer reduced his design to the simplest physical components.  It consists of a stepladder arrangement of horizontal parallel lines ascending from the snow-covered ground through the unbroken plane of the slate-gray sea to the leaden sky, which is relieved only by suffused light" (Winslow Homer in the 1890s: Prout's Neck Observed, Rochester, New York, 1990, p. 115).