Winslow Homer 1836 - 1910

Doll & Richards, Boston, Massachusetts, 1883
Edward W. Hooper, Boston, Massachusetts, 1883 (acquired from the above)
Mary Hooper Warner (his daughter), Boston, Massachusetts, 1901
Roger Sherman Warner, Jr. (her son), Washington, D.C., 1972
By descent to the present owner

Boston, Massachusetts, Doll & Richards, [English and Maine subjects], December 1883, no. 39 (as Chalk Cliffs)
Boston, Massachusetts, Saint Botolph Club, Regular Water-Color Exhibition, March 1890, no. 13 (as Boats on the England Coast)
Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Winslow Homer, February-March 1911
Boston, Massachusetts, Copley Society of Boston, Paintings in Water Color by Winslow Homer, John S. Sargent, Dodge MacKnight, March 1921, no. 10
Paris, France, Association Franco-Américaine d'Expositions de Painture ed de Sculpture, Exposition d'Art Amèricain: John S. Sargent, R.A., Dodge MacKnight, Winslow Homer, Paul Manship, May-June 1923, no. 39

William Howe Downes, The Life and Works of Winslow Homer, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974, p. 104
Lloyd Goodrich and Abigail Booth Gerdts, Record of Works by Winslow Homer, New York, 2012, vol. IV.2, no. 1182, p. 236, illustrated

Winslow Homer executed Storm on the English Coast in 1883, nearly two years after he left New York for England on a trip that was scheduled to last only a few months. After a short stop in London, he settled in the small fishing village of Cullercoats on the northeastern coast of England. Though Homer began to work in watercolor a decade before, his sojourn in England instigated a pivotal change in his technique and subject matter. The time the artist spent in Cullercoats was particularly transformative. As Lloyd Goodrich explains, [it was a] “turning point…in every way. It brought [Homer] into close contact with the sea, henceforth his dominant theme. It witnessed a phenomenal maturing in mind and vision. It resulted in a long step forward in technical mastery. It brought him his greatest acclaim and his most solid financial rewards up to that time. And it settled in his mind the kind of life he wanted to lead and the kind of art he wanted to produce” (Winslow Homer, New York, 1944, p. 82).

Storm on the English Coast displays the new handling and consideration of the watercolor medium that Homer adopted while living abroad. The setting of the present work is Flamborough Head, a promontory on the North Sea coast that forms Bridlington Bay, about eighty-five miles south of Tynemouth. Depicting a group of fishermen on the rocky shore, the watercolor captures the rugged beauty of this remote environment, where essentially every aspect of life was governed by the weather and the sea. As such, Homer often depicted figures reckoning with the powerful, active forces of nature and strove to emphasize the tempestuous atmospheric effects he likely experienced as he lived and worked in Cullercoats. Employing the subtractive techniques that were fundamental to the work of English watercolorists such as J.M.W. Turner, Homer has blotted and scraped away the medium in areas of the composition to produce the impression of a dynamic sky and sea. Though anchored by the strong draftsmanship the artist also refined in England, a clear sense of movement underlies Storm on the Coast. This vitality is emblematic of the Cullercoats watercolors.